By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
THE Shadow Police Minister has reignited the call for extra cops in Cardinia and Casey.
In Parliament this month Pakenham-based MP Edward O’Donohue questioned whether additional police will ever be funded for in Melbourne’s south-east under the new government, noting the recent state budget had only committed to additional police in Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula.
“What we see in the first budget is that Labor’s committed to no additional police, save for a handful in Geelong and the Bellarine, and growth areas like Casey, growth areas like Cardinia, which are growing so rapidly, are unlikely to see many additional resources because government is not making those resources available,” the MP for Eastern Victoria said.
“So it has to put pressure on police and when you look at the changed operating environment that also adds additional pressure on police resourcing when members are no longer doing one-up patrols or doing fewer one-up patrols.”
In October, while the previous State Government was in power, the Police Association held a community rally in Berwick calling for both major parties to commit to boosting police resources in Casey due to the municipality’s population growth.
Police Association secretary Ron Iddles set the demand for an additional 155 first-response officers for Casey over the following five years, indicating there were just 60 first-response officers for every 100,000 people in the municipality, compared to a state average of 102 for every 100,000.
Mr O’Donohue, who recently helped launch a petition calling for additional police numbers, also demanded transparency on the government’s custody officer program, demanding a timeline as to when these will be rolled out in Melbourne’s south-east.
“We’re more than six months into the term of the government and they haven’t yet trained a single custody officer,” he said.
“We don’t have a timetable of when 400 custody officers will be deployed, when Dandenong and other places will actually get the custody officers, when our side of town will actually see any benefit.”
A spokesperson for Police Minister Wade Noonan did not answer whether the resource quota recommended for Casey by the Police Association would be met and only said that the government would ensure Victoria Police is “appropriately resourced to address the law and order issues facing our community in Casey and across the state”.
The spokesperson also said training of the new custody officers will start “in the 2015/16 financial year, with Victoria Police currently developing an implementation and deployment model”.
