There will be a greater focus on reducing illegal hunting, stock theft and theft from properties with the creation of Rural Crime Prevention Teams across regional NSW.
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Commissioner Mick Fuller, Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys, Assistant Commissioner Geoff McKechnie and NSW Police Minister Troy Grant were in Dubbo to announce the launch of the teams on Tuesday.
Commissioner Fuller said the inclusion of high ranking officers and additional investigators takes the rural crime team across the state to 42 officers.
Detective Sergeants will be located at Cootamundra, Parkes and Moree with Detective Inspector Cameron Whiteside to head the team from Dubbo.
Four new investigator positions will be created at Parkes, Cootamundra, Walgett and Deniliquin.
Commissioner Fuller said the focus was not just on solving crime, but preventing crime and making regional communities safer.
“We are improving outcomes for victims of rural crime and ensuring we have the right structure in place to do that. This takes away one of the challenges police have had for some time,” Commissioner Fuller said.
“The Rural Crime Prevention Teams will share information across the districts which will allow officers to identify patterns and recidivist behaviour.”
The teams are part of the police re-engineering process currently being undertaken across regional NSW and Deputy Commissioner Worboys said
“I think we’ve shown that country NSW is important to re-engineering and important to policing. The new structure for the first time sees senior police officers in charge of clusters.
“[We have] Detective Inspectors, Detective Sergeants at the top of the state, down the bottom and in the centre of the state.
“The message is we want rural crime reported, we want to be able to collect that data and make sure we task and deploy these additional resources in the most appropriate ways.”
Deputy Commissioner Worboys said the teams would be able to address some of the issues raised in the Bradshaw report, a review made public in February 2016 that looked at issues surrounding illegal hunting.
Western Region Commander, Assistant Commissioner Geoff McKechnie said the team would be a welcome addition to police resources.
”We’ve been looking forward to this time for a couple of years. We’ve seen the work Steve Bradshaw did about rural crime and the issues that raised, particularly around goat theft and under-reporting, illegal hunting, trespassing.
“The government delivered us some increased powers in that regard so it’s all starting to come together.”
Assistant Commissioner McKechnie said the specialist investigators would play an important role in reducing rural crime but stressed every police officer was capable of dealing with all types of crime.
“We’re providing additional training to our police, they too can contribute to reducing the level of this type of offence and ensuring communities are safe,” he said.
