Police crisis: Is it time to reset response to family violence?

ONE in five police officers are considering leaving the force in the next 12 months, while 67 per cent say they are feeling burnt out.

On top of that, according to Secretary of the Victoria Police Association Wayne Gatt, there are 800 vacancies in police ranks at the moment with a further 900 officers absent for work-related injuries and long-term leave.

“It’s been a record year of attrition,” he told ABC Radio this week, with more leaving than being recruited.

But, more worrying still, is the continuing trend revealed in a study by RMIT researchers who have surveyed 1039 Victoria Police Officers.

And it certainly rings true locally, although Chief Commissioner Shane Patton claims numbers of recruits are outstripping those leaving the force.

"I don't believe the survey, I'm sorry," he said.

One local police officer, who is among those going out the revolving blue door, told the Sentinel-Times last week that the pay wasn’t good enough for the stuff you’ve got to deal with.

He didn’t say “stuff”.

“Scumbags causing trouble on drugs, the amount of times you have to turn out for family violence incidents and body-worn cameras that are likely to get you into more trouble than the perpetrators.

“If you don’t speak to the crims nicely enough, your behaviour can be reviewed by senior management. It’s just another thing you have to deal with,” he said.

It may also be that political interference is skewing police operational decisions with, for example, the increased emphasis on family violence initiatives, coming out of the 2015 Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence, including added pressure to charge and prosecute even relatively minor family violence “offences”, as well as the use and monitoring of family violence and personal safety orders as a main management tool.

It's a situation, as Korumburra Magistrate Andrew Halse highlighted last week, that may be taking police away from other more pressing issues of law and order.

“Why is this even here, what, just because it was listed as a family violence matter, a charge had to be laid?” said Magistrate Halse.

The magistrate was talking about a moment of stress that led to a 54-year-old local woman throwing her former partner’s mobile phone during an argument about the man’s daughter.

The accused woman, suffering from fibromyalgia, a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues; as well as chronic arthritis had just returned from hospital after an unsuccessful treatment when the brief argument broke out.

As the woman explained to the court, she thought her ex-partner, now a live-in friend in attendance in court, was trying to film her behaviour when she grabbed the phone and threw to the floor, trying to break it.

“We have been together for 30 years, now just as friends living together. It was an isolated incident, completely out of character, I am so sorry,” she said.

The magistrate accepted the explanation, noting that it was exactly the sort of incident with which the prosecution should be able to use its discretion.

“To say it was an isolated incident is a complete overstatement,” he said after hearing a summary of the incident, and the accused woman’s explanation.

“This is clearly a matter that comes under Section 76 of the sentencing act (which allows for the judge or magistrate to find the charge proven but to dismiss the charge without any further penalty) but I must deal with it,” he said, issuing no penalty notice or further action.

Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence was completed in 2015 and the Commission produced 227 recommendations “to reduce the impact of family violence in our community”, the last of which were allegedly implemented by the government in January 2023.

A significant number of the recommendations relate to police practices including that:

• The Chief Commissioner of Police report annually on family violence
• Victoria Police develop a new family violence performance management and reporting framework
• Set performance measures for policing of family violence are established at regional levels
• Additional resources for processing and responding to police referrals be added
• Ensure Victoria Police have guidance for identifying family violence primary aggressors
• Victoria Police establish a Family Violence Centre of Learning
• Victoria Police adapt its career structures to reflect family violence as core business
• Develop a core set of functions to be delivered by all Victoria Police family violence teams
• Trial body-worn cameras to collect statements from family violence incident scenes
• Consider Victoria Police issuing family violence intervention orders in the field.

Maybe it’s time to redress the balance.

The total number of family violence incidents in the year to the end of March 2023, fell by 5.9% in Bass Coast and 2.4% in South Gippsland, which means that either the message is getting through or a lack of police resourcing allowed detection and prosecution to drop.

There was however a 22.9% increase in other crime in South Gippsland, and possibly coming off the back of an exodus in population numbers after COVID, 0.0% increase in Bass Coast.