Queensland Police not serving the people

In the Public Interest:

Introduction: The notice below was posted on a Facebook page. We feel that this information is so important to help people understand why the Queensland police do nothing with many reports people attempt to submit to them, that we publish it here for all to read.

In the public interest, I wish to let people know what is currently going on in the Queensland Police Service.

As someone who used to be a Queensland police officer and who is now retired, I obviously know more about what is going on within the QPS than the average person. What I wish to advise here is information that the people of Queensland need to know. Hopefully, if the people of Queensland know this information it may result in another Fitzgerald style Inquiry. Something Queensland desperately needs.

Why Aren’t Police Helping Us?

1. Many people who have been victims of crime will agree that when they have gone to a police station to report that they have been a victim of a crime, or if police have been called out to their residence, that they have been unable to get the police to assist them.

The common reason for this is that police officers are often being told by their bosses (more senior police) not to help victims of crime. I don’t know for sure where this directive has come from. I know that nothing has been put in writing. But at many police stations, the officers in charge of those stations are telling their staff to, ‘fob off’, victims of crime. Or more crudely, ‘tell them to Fu#! Off’. I even know of a case where a Superintendent (extremely senior police officer) has attended police stations and openly spoken with groups of police officers at those stations and told them the same. Police were told that unless the offence was very serious then do everything you can to avoid taking the complaint. They were told that when the victim of the crime makes a complaint about the officer not assisting them that the officer will always be, ‘backed up’, and that the officer will not get into any trouble.

A few of the ways police regularly refuse to take crime reports off victims of crime are the following:-

• The officer tells the victim that they need to report the matter to the police station nearest to where the offence took place. The victim is then sent off on a wild goose chase. He/she drives to another police station just to be fobbed off by the officer there.
• The officer tells the victim that there isn’t really anything police can do in a situation like this to help them.
• The officer tells the victim that it is a civil matter.
• There are many more ways. Basically, anything that fobs off the victim. If that doesn’t work then the officer will often just walk away and leave the victim of the crime standing there confused.

Likewise, when police do take crime reports and those reports are sent to be investigated, often the investigating officer will find some excuse or reason not to do anything to help the victim of the crime. Excuses such as, ‘insufficient evidence to proceed’, or, ‘it is a civil matter’, are common. But there are many more.

You may ask the question, ‘Why is this happening?’. Well I believe it is because the senior police giving this direction believe that it is more important to have police handing out trivial speeding tickets etc than helping victims of crime. If each police car that goes out every day hands out 10 tickets or so per shift. And each ticket raises about $300 in revenue. Then that is about $3000 per shift. Three thousand dollars straight to the Government in revenue. If police were doing ‘real police work’ and helping victims of crime then this little money spinner would cease. And I believe many of our politicians wouldn’t want that. And I believe many of our senior police know this and that many of these officers have such little integrity that they really don’t give a dam about the people who have been hurt as a result of being the victims of crime.

Many years ago speeding tickets were issued by the ‘Traffic Branch’ and ‘General Duties’ police spent their time helping victims of crime. Obviously general duties police would still issue tickets when necessary, but they didn’t spend their time looking for people to ticket like they do now. These days we still have the Traffic Branch which is now called, ‘Road Policing Command’, but general duties police are also expected to bring in tickets as well. And how sad it is that we have so many police officers in Road Policing Command. Their entire job is just driving around and fining people, and often for trivial offences.

Many police officers will actually speed to a location and then set up a radar and fine members of society for the same thing they did just moments before. Or they drive around all day looking for people to give a ticket to whilst at the same time ignoring the urgent jobs coming over the police radio. Someone being the victim of domestic violence, someone being bashed, someone being robbed; as a general rule they totally ignore these calls and are ‘non-taskable’. Every day there are hundreds of situations in Queensland needing urgent police attention and yet people are left on their own and to fend for themselves waiting for a general duties police unit to show up, when a Road Policing Command police unit may be in the next street and simply ignores the call.

And sadly when the general duties police do show up the officers of today often have such little integrity and such little regard for their fellow man that they happily follow their bosses order and refuse to help the victim of the crime and often actually make the problem worse for the victim.

Now you will hear all the rhetoric about there not being quotas for tickets. The reality is that there are quotas. If an officer isn’t getting enough tickets per shift he will be pulled aside by a senior officer and ‘spoken too’. If he still doesn’t get enough tickets there will be some type of ramification that he will experience, e.g. subtle and sometimes not so subtle bullying etc.

Likewise, if a police officer is regularly doing the right thing and taking crime reports from victims of crime and causing too much, ‘non-important’, police work to be undertaken, then it won’t be long before this officer will also be pulled aside by a more senior officer and spoken too.

Also, a person’s position in society will have a large part to play in whether police will assist them or not. For instance, if a victim of crime was a politician, or the son or daughter of a politician, or the son or daughter of a senior police officer, or some other high profile person in society or the son or daughter of someone making large yearly donations to the election campaigns of certain politicians, the crime report will be taken and the matter handled professionally. But if the victim is just the son or daughter of the average person, quite possibly they will be fobbed off and left to fend for themselves.

2. The Crime and Corruption Commission and the Ethical Standards Unit

Both of these organisations are largely stacked with police officers who have been, ‘hand-picked’. Hand-picked because they want police officers who will do as they are told. Senior officers who are doing the wrong thing don’t want the police in the Ethical Standards Unit or the Crime and Corruption Commission putting them in prison. That is not to say that there are not some honest police in these units. There are. But they aren’t allowed to do their jobs effectively. If they did, there would be a lot of very senior police officers and politicians in gaol. The sad reality is that those who do as they are told and cover-up for others when they are requested to do so by their bosses are promoted for their corruption as a reward.
The sad reality is that often the really bad cops are protected from prosecution but cops who are trying to actually do, ‘real police work’, and rocking the boat by doing what the public wants from them, like protecting victims of crime and not pulling over people and raising revenue, are often the ones who will be bullied by senior officers for minor transgressions or mistakes.

3. The more recent way of handling complaints against police

In recent times more and more complaints against police are handed back to the very police station where the police officers who are being complained about work. These complaints are then handed to a police officer who often actually works with the officer or officers who the complaint is made about. Quite frankly, it is unbelievable that a police officer who may have committed a serious criminal offence can be investigated by another officer who is his friend and work colleague. It is a massive conflict of interest. It should not occur. However this does occur everyday in the Queensland Police Service. A police officer could be working with another police officer every day and is then tasked with investigating his colleague over allegations of things like assaults and serious criminal offences. From what I can see it is a big ‘Fu%# You’ to the people of Queensland. A big, ‘We do what we want and you can get fu#$ed if you dare challenge us’.

The officers who do the investigations are also almost always encouraged by senior officers to exonerate the officer being complained about and to even shout at and abuse the person making the complaint. This makes it less likely that they will ever complain again.

4. Bashings

People are often being bashed by police. Sadly there are some police who really seem to get a thrill out of bashing people. There are some officers who have dozens of complaints made about them for bashing people and who are still working in the QPS and who have never gotten into any trouble over it. Often someone may get arrested for something trivial such as being drunk in a public place etc and gives the officer a ‘little bit of lip’ and as a result is bashed. Or it could be that someone gets angry at police when they refuse to help him/her. A victim of a crime for example. And as a result, gives the officer some lip and is subsequently bashed. Sometimes because the officer has no power of self-control over his actions and sometimes because the officer is just a thug who joined the Queensland Police Service because he wants to throw his weight around and be a bully.

Sometimes the officer then charges the person he bashed with assault so as he then has an excuse for why he bashed the person. The officer says he was simply defending himself. This makes it very easy for his fellow police officer mates who are investigating the matter to exonerate him from all blame. And sadly an innocent man is then charged and put before the court.

There is a push on by some to make jail sentences mandatory for those who assault police. I would hate to see this happen.

5. The nature of policing in Queensland has changed

The very nature of policing in Queensland has changed dramatically over the past decade or so. There seems to be very little emphasis by those in positions of authority in the Queensland Police Service on protecting victims of crime. This is particularly the case in large towns and cities in Queensland. It is not as prevalent in rural areas. In the small rural areas people will often get good service from the police. I think mainly because the police in these areas often know the majority of the people who they deal with, and if they don’t want to be ostracised and shunned by their community they know they had better behave properly. However in the cities where anonymity reigns many police seem not to care.

6. Crime committed by Queensland Police

There are people in the Queensland Police Service who are simply criminals. Obviously this is something everyone would be aware of. All the things that were happening in the Queensland Police service in the pre-Fitzgerald days are back but now far worse than ever. I would love to name names but the risk of slander proceedings and reprisals prevent this. That is why I write this article under a pseudonym.

7. How this can fixed over-night

Simple. Disband the CCC and the Ethical Standards Unit and hand all complaints against police over to a law firm and never allow anybody who is either a current or former Queensland Police Officer to investigate complaints against police. And to be certain that corruption doesn’t infiltrate this law firm, rotate law firms handling the complaints every 6 months or so. It would be far cheaper than spending the massive levels of money currently spent on the CCC etc and overnight all the bad cops would be kicked out and prosecuted and any new recruits coming in would realise that they had to behave or the same would happen to them.

The only reason we have so many crooks in the Queensland Police Service is because they are being allowed to be crooks by the many hand-picked corrupt police currently working in the Crime and Corruption Commission and the Ethical Standards Unit.

And should we ever have a Royal Commission into the Queensland Police Service then I would suspect that many of the police officers currently involved in covering up and protecting bad cops are going to go to jail themselves.

So why isn’t this being done?

That is the question?

Maybe ask your local member of parliament or the Premier why?

Signed

Pseudonym

Or you can take a positive step to help reform the government system that has debased our police service to the point where they no longer serve the people they are supposed to.

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