Wyndham, with the lowest police-to-population ratio in Victoria, is facing a policing “crisis”, according to a senior western suburbs officer.
Detective Senior Constable Brendan O’Mahoney said that, on average, there were fewer front line police on duty at Werribee now than in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
More than 150 people who attended a rally in Werribee last Saturday heard that Wyndham needed more police, a redeveloped Werribee police station and new stations at Point Cook and Wyndham Vale.
People at the rally included federal Lalor MP Joanne Ryan, state Labor MPs Tim Pallas and Jill Hennessy, mayor Bob Fairclough and Cr Peter Gibbons, a 44-year police veteran.
Police Association secretary Ron Iddles told the crowd the City of Wyndham needed 111 police just to meet the state average ratio.
“The current policing model is to have an average of 102 police per 100,000 people. Wyndham has 45 per 100,000 people – it’s a disgrace,” he said.
“Crime in Wyndham went up 7.5 per cent [in 2013-14] and robberies went up 70 per cent; assaults and car thefts were up, but drug offences were down. That’s because there’s not enough police on the street to charge people with drug offences.’’
Detective Senior Constable O’Mahoney, a Wyndham Police Association delegate whose family has lived in the area more than 60 years, said the city’s officers were at breaking point.
He said that for too long Wyndham officers had been working double shifts and coming in on days off to cover for sick or burnt-out colleagues. ‘‘It can’t continue. Every day, I see and hear members who are exhausted and stressed because of the lack of resources. It isn’t fair on them or the people of Wyndham.”
After speaking to a close family friend who was a police officer at Werribee in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Detective Senior Constable O’Mahoney said he “nearly fell off his chair” when he discovered police numbers were similar to those at Werribee today, despite a tenfold population increase.
“It means there are effectively fewer first responder police in Wyndham than there were in the late 1970s.”
Senior Sergeant Iddles said the current method of basing police allocations on crime statistics was flawed. “It’s like looking in the rear-vision mirror.”
