Nathan Mawby
POLICE chief Simon Overland admits the community has lost confidence in public transport and says improving safety is a top priority.
The commissioner was speaking at a community meeting in Melbourne last night on progress in the force’s five-tier plan to improve its service delivery.
Mr Overland flagged public transport as the greatest concern facing police in Melbourne.
“I think the public has lost confidence in the public transport system,” he said in a Town Hall address.
“The first is the whole issue around public transport safety.
“What we are trying to focus on are those things that are the greatest threat to people’s lives and their enjoyment of life.”
Mr Overland also said that police are so stretched dealing with mental ill-health in the community that tragic outcomes are almost inevitable
He said the force was “dealing with huge amounts of mental ill-health”, including dozens of incidents – some involving an armed person threatening harm to themselves or others – every day across Victoria.
“The problem for us is that we are the agency of last resort, so we will be called when everything else has failed,” Mr Overland told the forum.
“We resolve the overwhelming vast majority of those peacefully.
“(But) every now and then, one of them will go tragically wrong and we will have a shooting.
“We haven’t had one for a while, but I can almost guarantee … well, I can guarantee that we will have another one at some stage in the future.
“We are doing everything we can to make sure that our people have got the skills to deal with it.
“We’re very aware that it’s an issue but we are just dealing with so much mental ill-health. We’re under real strain.”
Mr Overland outlined the key concerns for police in 2011, including improving public safety, particularly on public transport; fighting serious and organised crime; reducing the road toll; preventing crimes against crimes against the person, and emergency management.
Mr Overland fielded concerns about drunken night time violence in the CBD, retaining officers to foster
relationships with the community and the involvement of mentally ill people in crime.
Mr Overland maintained that youth would continue to be the focus of efforts to deal with violent crime, referring to younger Victorians as “over represented” in statistics around violence.
Police have reduced most forms of crime and taken steps to reduce threats to officers’ safety since the five year plan for Victoria Police titled The Way Ahead was launched in 2008
Mr Overland said that latest data indicated only aggravated burglaries and assaults had risen in the 12 months to December 31, 2010.
The reductions have put police 4.7 per cent ahead of schedule to reduce crime 12 per cent by 2013, compared with levels in 2008.
Source: www.herald.com.au
