Opinion
Why would anyone trust police in Victoria any more? Politicised, corrupt and hypocritical, VicPol’s reputation has been battered on all fronts over the past few years.
It wasn’t just the naked brutality of the Covid era, when Victoria Police rolled out assault vehicles and locked down the skies, smashed old ladies into the roads, and opened up with teargas and rubber bullets on the sacred grounds of the Shrine of Remembrance. It wasn’t just the deep-rooted corruption revealed by the Lawyer X and Red Shirts scandals.
When the High Court ruled that the George Pell trial was perhaps the most egregious miscarriage of justice since the Chamberlain saga, VicPol were in the thick of it. Police pursued an obvious vendetta against the Cardinal, setting up a “Get Pell” squad to troll for dirt, before even a single criminal complaint had been made.
As it turns out, VicPol might have been better removing the beam in their own eyes, first.
Some 78 Victoria Police officers and Protective Service Officers are facing criminal charges and traffic offences, with a disturbing number relating to serious sex offences including rape, sexual assault and indecent acts against children including possessing and producing child pornography.
Three charges of rape and five sexual assault charges against police are among 19 sex charges before the courts, in addition to a range of sex offences allegedly committed against children aged under 16.
One police officer faces a charge of incest relating to a sibling.
Casting the first stone, indeed.
Like the Church they pursued so doggedly, it seems the rozzers have more than a few skeletons they’ve been trying their darnedest to keep in their closets.
The police crime data – released by Victoria Police after a request from The Australian – cover offences allegedly committed by 68 officers on and off duty.
And, yes, the criminality goes all the way to the top.
The 73 police officers facing charges and traffic offences include seven first constables, 20 senior constables, 26 leading senior constables, 14 sergeants, five senior sergeants and one ranked inspector or above and they face a total of about 130 charges […]
Five PSOs are facing criminal charges, with two relating to an indecent act against a child aged under 16 and one of alleged sexual penetration of a child aged under 16. Of the PSOs charged, two were general PSOs and three senior PSOs […]
Victoria Police said it was releasing the data as part of a commitment to transparency and stressed the vast majority of the force’s almost 18,000 police officers and PSOs were law-abiding, noting the data showed just 0.435 per cent of the force was facing criminal charges.
The Australian
Except, if the data has to be sought out by journalists instead of being made proactively available to the public, one might be justifiably sceptical about that “commitment to transparency”.
And, yes, no doubt the vast majority of VicPol employees are law-abiding — but the same could be said of priests. Yet, the presence of a small, but egregiously criminal, minority was sufficient to blacken the Church’s name. Not to mention attract the zealous attack dogs of Victoria Police.
When institutions show that they cannot be trusted, social harmony takes a battering. Few institutions are as critical as law enforcement — and, in Victoria at least, they’re giving citizens increasingly less reason to trust them.