New police officers are being rushed to Logan, Queensland, to help soothe the surging demand weeks after it was revealed some domestic violence incidents had been left unresourced for weeks.
Acting Queensland Police Commissioner Shane Chelepy today announced that 20 officers will be allocated to the Logan district before June.
“We’ll see another 80 positions after June and they will go, majority, into Logan district,” he said.
”There will be some first-year constables coming in but we’re balancing that by asking experienced police from around the state who may want to come back to the south-east corner to consider Logan as a placement.”
There are already 27 vacancies at Logan, meaning that, after today, there are now 47 spots to fill.
Chelepy said he’s listening to his staff and actioning their concerns but officers claimed there needed to be sweeping reform.
“Just throwing police officers at this is not going to solve this problem,” Queensland Police Union’s Shane Prior said.
“We need significant reform in domestic and family violence to start addressing and streamlining police processes so we can get that.”
The announcement comes just two weeks after 9News revealed data that showed some domestic violence jobs in Logan were unresourced for almost a month, which frontline officers blamed on crippling staff shortages.
Police Minister Dan Purdie said the findings were “unacceptable”.
“If they can’t respond to the call for service, that next person on the phone could be your mum or your sister, your loved one and that’s unacceptable,” he said.
As new staff make their way over to Logan, officers from South Brisbane and the Gold Coast have been temporarily assisting the district in recent weeks.
Sources say that has driven down the number of unresourced jobs to 78 at 9am today.