The former chief of the ACT police says the junior nature of his rank-and-file officers was "leading to non-optimal outcomes" with "matters dismissed at court" and "costs against police ... at an all-time high".
In a speech to an ACT forensics conference just before leaving the office of ACT chief police officer last month, Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan said the ACT Chief Magistrate and the ACT Ombudsman had "both raised concerns with me about the make-up of the [police] workforce".
"Our general duties police officer, those most likely to provide the immediate response to crime, are the most inexperienced in the country," he said.
"At our police stations - Gungahlin, Belconnen, City, Woden and Tuggeranong - over 48 per cent of our uniformed police are probationary constables.
"With approximately 100 new police coming in the ACT [in] in each of the next two financial years, the balance of experience across the ACTP will require careful management by the incoming CPO [Chief Police Officer]."
Deputy Commissioner Gaughan was the longest-serving top cop in the ACT for decades and while he said he enjoyed a productive relationship with the ACT government and the Police minister Mick Gentleman, was always prepared to speak his mind.
The most strident of these occasions was In January last year when he warned how pressure of an understrength workforce was causing internal health and welfare stress issues, and that both priority one and two target response times to the territory's most serious incidents had not been achieved.
"We need to do something; it has become a much more complex [policing] environment, more suicides, more domestic violence, more mental health [issues]," he said.
An independent consultant's report, commissioned by the federal police, confirmed everything.
The ACT government, which had under-funded its police against the territory's fast-rising population growth for years - as confirmed by repeated reports on government services - was compelled to act and last year committed $107 million for 126 new staff over five years.
But that hard-fought win on numbers, while welcomed, won't keep pace with the growing community demands for service coupled with the drain of the very best, locally-trained talent into the ranks of the federal police, which is itself under pressure to combat the activities of well-richly funded organised crime groups as well as fast-rising crime types such as cybercrime and child exploitation.
Deputy Commissioner Gaughan said the ACT loses 3.7 per cent of its officers a year through natural attrition, and about 12 per cent to the "national side of the AFP".
"As the AFP continues to operate at pace and with precision, it is imperative we continually provide pathways and opportunities for our current members and recruits," his boss, Commissioner Reece Kershaw, told a Senates Estimates hearing late last year.
ACT Policing had 122 new officers join its ranks last year. It was unable to able to provide exact numbers of officers who are currently probationary "due to operational requirements".
Probationary constables are required to complete a series of mandatory tasks recorded in a workbook and there is no set period for their progress from probationary Band Two to Band Three.
The police annual report revealed there were 127 sworn officers at the Band Two level in 2022-23. Of the all sworn 731 police in the ACT, 70 per cent were within the lower Bands Two, Three and Four.
Bands Six and Seven are generally designated as team leader, or sergeant, ranks.
In a statement, it was admitted "costs awarded against ACT Policing have increased over time, [but] we are not able to provide dollar figures on costs (due to confidentiality provisions)".
"However, in 2022-23, 86 matters had costs awarded against ACT Policing," the statement said.
"In all cases where costs are awarded, ACT Policing considers the reasons and where required, amends training, support and guidance to seek to ensure similar outcomes don't occur in the future."
Such was the resourcing pressure within the ACT that Deputy Commissioner Gaughan shut down the local fraud team last year. As of late March this year, there were "17 unallocated fraud matters with ... a value in excess of $22 million".
"There will continue to be more work than resources to tackle the problems," he said.
