POLICE IN SCHOOLS PROGRAM CONFUSION

Premier Steve Bracks and Chief Commissioner of Police, Christine Nixon, don’t know ‘whether they are Arthur or Martha’ when it comes to the future of the Police Schools Involvement Program according to The Nationals Member for Benalla, Bill Sykes.

Dr Sykes who has campaigned strongly for retention and expansion of the Police Schools Involvement Program said, “Ms Nixon has stated the police will be withdrawn from schools whilst Mr Bracks said in Parliament yesterday that the police presence will be expanded in schools.

“Chief Commissioner Nixon recently sent me an information package on the proposal to abandon the Police Schools Involvement Program in favour of a new system which is proposed to operate outside the school curriculum.

“The proposal states: If the model is approved, the model will be phased in to coincide with the current police in schools withdrawing from schools at the end of 2005 with the new model to commence in 2006.

Yesterday, Mr Bracks said in Parliament, “It is being changed and it will be changed for the better, which will be great. This program covers a very small number of schools across Victoria. It has a very small selection of schools. The aim of the Police in Schools Program and the examination by the Chief Commissioner is to spread that out further to do it better and much more comprehensively across the school system.”

“This confusion is yet another example of the Bracks’ Government’s inability to manage major programs.

“I am also concerned that under the new proposal, the police are to become Youth Resource Officers and the officers are meant to spend their time ‘coordinating and facilitating rather than service delivery’.

“That’s bureaucratic double-speak for saying the police will become desk jockeys and they won’t be talking to any students face-to-face in the school environment, which is the key to the success of the current program.

Dr Sykes concluded, “I, and my Nationals colleagues will continue to campaign for the retention and expansion of the Police Schools Involvement Program for one simple reason…… it works!

Media contact: Bill Sykes (03) 5762 2100 or 0427 624 989