Tuesday, 18 February 2020

Latrobe Valley police resources

Mr NORTHE (Morwell) (19:13): (1869) My adjournment matter is directed to the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. The action I seek is for the minister to provide the Latrobe Valley region with sufficient police resources to help address the incidence of crime within my community.

I want to place on the record my support of my local police, who on the whole do a wonderful job in what can be a very challenging and sometimes dangerous environment. I know many members personally, and I well understand the sacrifices they make in serving and protecting our community. For police to undertake their duties to their maximum capacity we need to ensure they are adequately resourced so that in turn they are able to make our community safe.

I was recently contacted by a concerned group of local residents who had been the recent victims of criminal activity. Subsequently we were able to help coordinate a forum in which senior personnel from Victoria Police attended along with approximately 100 people from the local community. Whilst I was not able to attend personally due to Parliament commitments, a number of issues were raised and they were highlighted in the Latrobe Valley Express of 10 February. Within the same article Latrobe Acting Inspector Peter Fusinato said, and I quote:

“It’s a tough gig, we work hard at it and we’ve been under resourced. The normal response would be that we would rally the troops …

“When we have an identified an issue within the division, we throw as much resources at it as we can.

“This was identified clearly in January with your crime spiking and we didn’t have the resources to throw at it, so it’s been a minimal response to the best ability we could.

I would say, to be fair and reasonable, that local police were dragged away from the region due to bushfire events, and there is certainly understanding from me and the community; however, the Latrobe region does have extremely poor crime statistics. When you look at it from a local government area perspective and criminal incidents per 100 000 population, unfortunately our community sits second behind Melbourne city. So unfortunately there are a lot of criminal incidents within our community, and as a consequence it is important that we have adequate police resources to tackle that.

Of course there is much community frustration also relating to the punishment, or lack thereof, handed down to offenders once they are apprehended. One resident told our local paper, and I quote:

They know when they get caught they’re going to be slapped on the wrist.

So it is imperative that offenders are dealt with knowing the impact their actions have upon their victims as well. The reality is that many of our local people are living in fear at the moment, and it is imperative that the government provides adequate local police resources and that those coming before the courts have penalties applied that reflect community expectations. If that means that the government needs to increase penalties or change laws to ensure that criminal activity like has been happening in our community will not be tolerated, then so be it.