More police officers must “immediately” be deployed to Melton and Caroline Springs if Victoria Police is serious about addressing the findings of a mental health review, according to the police association.
A “suck it up” macho culture and workload pressures significantly contributed towards a mental health crisis in the force, the damning Victoria Police review, led by clinical and organisational psychologist Peter Cotton, found.
One senior constable likened his workload to “the elephant in the room”.
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“I compare it to laying a drain pipe,” the senior constable said. “I used to be asked to lay 20 metres per day – now it seems more like 100 metres”.
Police Association secretary Ron Iddles welcomed the findings of the review but said references to workload issues were consistent with the feedback Melton and Caroline Springs officers had raised in recent months.
“Our members tell us they are stressed, both at work and at home, that their families are struggling and they can’t deal with the volume and intensity of work in their area,” Mr Iddles said.
Despite there being no recommendation in the report about increasing police numbers, the review is littered with “harrowing” accounts of workloads and their impacts on officers.
Members at Melton and Caroline Springs “urgently” needed more support to address the crisis, Mr Iddles said.
“If Victoria Police is serious about accepting all of the recommendations of this report, then it should show leadership and act immediately to redeploy additional members to Melton and reduce the stress and pressure our members have complained of for nearly a decade now,” he said.
Overtime toll
In an email to the Police Association seen by Star Weekly, a constable highlighted the intense toll “a great deal of overtime” was having on officers in the Melton and Caroline Springs area.
“This is resulting in members calling in sick, which then places more pressure on members working on those shifts,” the constable said.
When Star Weekly asked Victoria Police if it would consider committing to extra frontline police in addition to the 300 announced in the state budget earlier this year, spokeswoman Sophie Jennings said: “While we’re still working through where these police will be allocated, they will be a welcome addition to areas experiencing high population growth.”
But Mr Iddles questioned why “the crime rate [was] soaring in Melton” and yet his members there had been left wanting for the support they “so desperately” needed.
