Just weeks after passing new laws allowing Protective Services Officers to be deployed to heavily populated areas like shopping centres, a PSO was charged over two violent incidents in Melbourne last year.
It comes amid widespread concerns over the expansion of the use of Protective Services Officers (PSOs), originally a COVID-19 emergency measure, which critics have labelled a “recipe for tragedy” with the use of “second tier police” to further increase the over-policing of marginalised and disadvantaged groups in society.
In November a PSO was charged over two assaults that occured in late 2019. The officer has been charged with three counts of unlawful assault and one charge of recklessly causing injury while on duty in Melton and Sunshine in October and December last year.
A previous report in 2016 found evidence of PSOs engaging in excessive force and predatory behaviour, and there have been a number of public incidents in recent years. Despite this, the Victorian government has plowed ahead with its plan to expand the use of PSOs around the state in crowded areas, despite concerns over their level of training and the fact they are armed.
Legislation allowing the Chief Commissioner of the police, rather than the government, to declare an area as a designated site that PSOs can use their powers in, such as at sporting events or shopping centres, was passed by the Victorian upper house last month.
PSOs have largely the same powers to police officers and armed, but can only operate in and around their designated areas, currently train stations and sites like Parliament House. They were introduced in 2012 by the then-Liberal government, and their powers have been greatly expanded by the Andrews government in recent years, despite little evidence for their effectiveness in reducing crime.
Under new laws passed by Victorian Parliament, PSOs will be deployed to areas such as shopping centres, sporting precincts and other highly populated sites, with the Chief Commissioner given the ability to declare an area as a “designated place” where PSOs can use their powers.
These are places where a “highly visible police presence can help prevent crime and provide reassurance to the public”.
“These common-sense changes give Victoria Police the resources and flexibility to deploy PSOs to places where they’re needed most - whether that’s patrolling the transport network, managing large events or providing support at shopping centres,” police minister Lisa Neville said in Parliament.
“With thousands more police and hundreds of new PSOs, we will continue to ensure our police and PSOs have the power, resources and tools they need to serve the Victorian community.”
Crossbench Senators and the Greens raised significant concerns with the changes transforming PSOs to “police lite” and being a “recipe for tragedy” due to the significantly less training that they have compared to a police officer, but the bill was waved through by the government and Opposition.
With the new laws, PSOs will likely be used in crowded places and for crowd control following major events. Under the rules, the Chief Commissioner must be satisfied that declaring an area as a designated site for PSOs is “necessary for community safety at the place, to provide a policing presence, deter crime and anti-social behaviour, or provide reassurance for persons moving within that area”.
The Commissioner also has to be satisfied that the deployed PSOs will be supervised by police officers and their deployment will “not unduly impair the human rights of any person”.
This was trialled as an emergency measure during the COVID-19 pandemic, with PSOs deployed mainly to Frankston, Dandenong and Box Hill. These officers made 406 arrests and handed out nearly 300 infringement notices after stopping and checking more than 7000 people.
PSOs have roughly a fifth of the training as police officers, but many of the same powers when operating in their “designated areas”.
The auditor-general has previously concluded that there is no adequate data to assess the effectiveness of PSOs in improving general safety, and an IBAC report raised concerns about assaults, violence and predatory behaviour from PSOs.
But the power of PSOs has continually been expanded by the Andrews government.
Through emergency powers introduced in Victoria in April in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, 200 PSOs were sent to major activity centres in the Melbourne CBD and across the greater Melbourne and regional spaces, including Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo.
Legal and civil rights groups are concerned that PSOs, with significantly less training than police officers, will now be more widely interacting with vulnerable members of the community, and that the expanded use of them will lead to increased marginalisation of these members of society.
“We’re worried about over-policing of vulnerable, marginalised neighbourhoods and communities, and we’re worried the PSOs are not properly equipped or trained to handle the situations they are going to be put into,” Liberty Victoria’s Martin Radzaj says.
“The disparity between the amount of training that PSOs get and police officers get is huge, and to expand the use of PSOs into areas where they were not intended to operate in increases the risk of over-policing of vulnerable and marginalised groups.”
PSOs receive 12 weeks of training at the Victoria Police Academy in Glen Waverley, with a further three months of on-the-job training with a police officer. In contrast, a police officer receives 31 weeks of training, followed by 20 weeks of ‘on the job’ training.
The exam requirements for PSOs is lower than for a police officer as well.
“They’re getting all of these police powers with a fifth of the police training,” Radzaj says. “This is a huge investment of resources, and if they’re going to be used like police officers they should be trained like police officers.”
In Parliament, a number of crossbench senators raised significant concerns with the expansion of PSOs powers.
Sustainable Australia’s Clifford Hayes labelled it “policing on the cheap”.
“I really believe we need more well-trained police rather than more PSOs. Training of a skilled police force and a properly qualified police force is a terribly important matter these days,” Hayes said.
“It has always been a bit of a matter of concern with me, seeing PSOs walking around with guns and having the ability to exercise similar powers as police with but only a fraction of the training.”
Twelve weeks of training is not enough to be handling a firearm while dealing with highly complex situations and people, Hayes said.
“To have the skills to navigate and deescalate dangerous and potentially inflammatory situations - especially going out into large crowds where they might encounter people drug affected or suffering severe mental illness, homelessness or a complex range of issues - with firearms, I would much rather see fully trained police personnel doing work like that,” he said.
“Let us have more well-trained police rather than expanding where PSOs can operate with only a fraction of the training. I do not feel comfortable in supporting the presence of armed PSOs in public thoroughfares, shopping centres and large crowds.”
Reason Party leader Fiona Patten said the expansion of powers will blur the line between PSOs and police officers.
“After just 12 weeks training, they will be able to use lethal force in a shopping centre, to use lethal force in a showground, in a sportsground or in any large areas as specified by the Commissioner or Deputy Commission,” Patten said.
“We know that when these expanded powers occur, that those powers will affect the most powerless. They will affect our Aboriginal community, they will affect our young people the most. And certainly when we are talking about spaces like shopping centres, like showgrounds, it is those most disadvantaged that will probably come into contact with the PSOs more often and more regularly certainly that you and I would in here.”
The bill represents “mission creep” and will transform PSOs into “police lite”, Greens leader Samantha Ratnam said.
“I am sure this is convenient for the police, but is it in the best interests of Victoria?” Ratnam said. “These changes mean PSOs will now be interacting with and policing more of our community, including the most vulnerable. All of these parts of our community will now be policed by officers with little training.
“A person with 12 weeks of training and a handgun is not in a position to be able to safely de-escalate and control a difficult situation with a vulnerable person or child with severe mental illness. It is a recipe for tragedy.”
The bill was approved by the upper house by 32 votes to just six, with the Greens, Liberal Democrats, Sustainable Australia, independent Catherine Cumming and one Liberal member voting against it.
When PSOs have had these powers during the COVID-19 pandemic this year, the top reasons they have made an arrest have been for theft, shop theft and being drunk in a public place - an offence the Victorian government has pledged to abolish after admitting it disproportionately impacted vulnerable people and Indigenous Australians.
“It’s an offence that vastly and disproportionately impacts those vulnerable, marginalised groups from lower socio-economic areas,” Radzaj says.
“In times of crisis like we’re going through now is when these expansions of power occur under the guide of it being necessary to deal with the emergency, often what you see is the expansion and encroachment into civil liberties and human rights don’t then fall away after the emergency ends - they stay.
“And that’s a big concern for us.”
There is no evidence that PSOs have been an effective policing tool. In 2016, an auditor-general report found that while PSOs had increased the perceptions of safety on Victoria’s train network at night time, there was no data available to determine whether they’d actually had any impact on crime.
While there’s no evidence of their effectiveness, there is evidence of PSOs using excessive force and engaging in predatory behavior, as pointed out by the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission in 2016.
The report found three key areas of risk involving PSO conduct: assault and excessive use of force, unauthorised access to and disclosure of information and predatory behaviour involving members of the public.
It found that more than 40 percent of complaints about PSOs were related to excessive use of force, while the predatory behaviour often related to PSOs obtaining a young woman’s personal details through their position of power to then contact them socially.
Victoria Police responded to the report by introducing new training for PSOs relating to communication, conflict resolution and ethical standards, but there has been no data released on their effectiveness or if they have led to a decrease in complaints made against the officers.
The IBAC report pointed to an example of a PSO obtaining a young woman’s details for his running sheet after she was smoking at a train station. The woman later received a Facebook message from the PSO saying she had “amazingly beautiful eyes” and that she wasn't going to get fined. The office received workplace guidance after an investigation.
There have also been numerous high-profile incidents of PSOs using excessive force. In early 2018 a video showed an officer repeatedly hitting a man with a baton at Merri train station in Melbourne’s north, with another officer holding the man down.
Earlier in 2015, Victoria Police launched an investigation into two PSOs after footage showed them repeatedly spraying two teenagers with capsicum foam after one of them didn’t have a valid train ticket.
It’s often vulnerable young people who are targeted by PSOs and police, YouthLaw policy and advocacy officer Tiffany Overall says.
“We have definitely heard and are aware of situations where young women in particular are feeling at times harassed by PSOs, and more often than not it’s a young person,” Overall says. “They’re not feeling it’s a respectful engagement, there’s unnecessary aggravation and or a lack of belief in the circumstances.”
Overall says she is also concerned that PSOs will now also be used as a “second tier” of police.
“It seems to be so far removed from its original setup and we wonder what their real intention is,” she says. “They have to deal with the whole range of community members with all levels of vulnerability and disadvantage. We’re concerned about them not having that training. We’d like to see evidence that this is an absolutely necessary expansion of powers, or if it is more for police convenience or backup.”
Liberty Victoria has questioned the need for more PSOs in these public places.
“Why does the Premier think taxpayers would feel it appropriate for their funds to go towards shopping centre patrols?” Radzaj says.
“If you increase the risk of over-policing of vulnerable groups then the community’s trust in police at large suffers, because the community doesn’t differentiate between PSOs and police officers - they look alike. If one them engages in improper conduct or insensitive conduct, it tarnishes them all.”
Denham Sadler is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne. He covers politics and technology regularly for InnovationAus, and writes about other issues, including criminal justice, for publications including The Guardian and The Saturday Paper. He is also the senior editor of The Justice Map, a project to strengthen advocacy for criminal justice reform in Australia. You can follow him on Twitter.
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