Next step in trans­for­ma­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

That in­volves to­mor­row’s de­bate in Par­lia­ment on a mo­tion to adopt the re­port of the Po­lice Man­pow­er Au­dit com­mit­tee which was head­ed by Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran. De­bate be­gins 10 am.

The com­mit­tee was man­dat­ed in 2017 to ex­am­ine the man­pow­er of the Po­lice Ser­vice and the ex­tent to which its strength is meet­ing ma­jor ob­jec­tives and whether its hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty is suf­fi­cient.

Its re­port, ti­tled “Now is the Time—No Sa­cred Cows,” was sub­mit­ted to Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley last year Oc­to­ber. The Po­lice Ser­vice was found to be “in a wound­ed trou­bled” state main­ly be­cause of the com­plex net­work of prob­lems fac­ing it and plus con­tin­ued in­abil­i­ty to res­cue and re­cov­er it­self. The De­osaran team felt TTPS re­form has to be treat­ed as an emer­gency—but there’s no mag­ic cure.

In Au­gust, de­bate to ap­prove cur­rent Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “If you don’t want night­mares, or if you want night­mares, read that (re­port) as bed­side read­ing.” Row­ley said one of Grif­fith’s first tasks should be im­ple­ment­ing re­port rec­om­men­da­tions.

The re­port found:

• Cor­rup­tion con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice over years.

• When cer­tain po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions/raids are be­ing con­fi­den­tial­ly planned, in­for­ma­tion is “leaked” to tar­gets. Of­fi­cials said such tip-offs can on­ly come from in­side the plan­ning team.

• Of­fi­cers have been abus­ing sys­tems, re­sult­ing in tens of mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars spent an­nu­al­ly with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion and “low num­bers of of­fi­cers avail­able on any giv­en day to do polic­ing—what the re­port termed “twin dis­as­ters”. Over­time ex­pen­di­ture over 2013/2014 to 2014/2015 was $288,864,708.

• Of­fi­cers find­ing more clever ways of beat­ing the sys­tem to TTPS’ detri­ment, work­ing “out­side jobs” to boost in­come.

• Many in­stances where of­fi­cers on sick leave were found to be work­ing else­where or weren’t “re­al­ly in need of the leave”. One of­fi­cer sub­mit­ted sick leave doc­u­ments for 298 days in 2016.

• TTPS dis­ci­pli­nary sys­tem very in­ef­fi­cient, “be­ing abused by many of­fi­cers. Num­ber of al­le­ga­tions against of­fi­cers in­creas­ing an­nu­al­ly.

• Up to De­cem­ber 2016, 3,211 com­plaints against of­fi­cers, main­ly in North­ern/ South­ern di­vi­sions. Up to Feb­ru­ary, 2018 largest num­ber of of­fi­cers sus­pend­ed on com­plaints were con­sta­bles (272) out of 307. These in­clud­ed an as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er and se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent.

• High­est com­plaints—mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice, cor­rupt­ly ob­tain­ing mon­ey. Biggest dis­ci­pli­nary of­fences over 2014-15 in­clud­ed un­law­ful/un­nec­es­sary use of au­thor­i­ty, dis­cred­itable con­duct and ne­glect of du­ty.

• More than half of 500 po­lice of­fi­cers sur­veyed felt TTPS wasn’t sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly or­gan­ised.

• Over 40 per cent of all ranks/ages of of­fi­cers stat­ed cor­rup­tion in TTPS ex­ists ei­ther ‘very much’ or ‘much’ with high­er pro­por­tion of young of­fi­cers feel­ing this way.

• Largest TTPS man­pow­er deficits—in E999 Rapid Re­sponse Unit, Court and Process Branch, An­ti-Cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

• Is­sues not ad­dressed in time­ly man­ner.

• Re­peat­ed com­plaints by of­fi­cers that charges of in­dis­ci­pline/ cor­rup­tion drag on for years with­out res­o­lu­tion.

• One such case was called 55 times be­tween 2014 and 2016 and the of­fi­cer wasn’t served with sum­mons 41 times. Of the ten times a sum­mons was served, the of­fi­cer ap­peared nine, and 30 of the 55 times the hear­ing was called, the tri­bunal lacked a quo­rum.

• Con­fi­den­tial records/files/box­es stored hap­haz­ard­ly with pos­si­bil­i­ty of ma­nip­u­la­tion.

• Long de­lays in da­ta en­ter­ing/stor­ing in­for­ma­tion in com­put­ers.

• More joint op­er­a­tions be­tween po­lice, pris­ons, army, cus­toms and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies rec­om­mend­ed plus im­prove­ments in vet­ting/back­ground checks of all re­cruits.

• Leave abus­es/oth­er such se­ri­ous hu­man re­source prob­lems may re­quire com­plete­ly over­haul­ing the sys­tem.

↔—Gail Alexan­der