SA Police to replace six Local Service Areas with four zones in major operational restructure
FOUR new police zones will be established across Adelaide as part of a major restructure, announced by Police Commissioner Grant Stevens on Wednesday.
“It will see a substantial change in how we deliver our policing service,” he said.
“These (four) districts will have response teams — responsible for 24/7 response to public calls for urgent assistance.
“We’ll have more people able to respond to calls for assistance.”
Mr Stevens said SA Police had “done the costings” to implement the changes but he did “not have them available”.
“We intend to meet all of the costs associated with implementing these reforms within our existing budget allocation,” he said.
But he did say the reforms would provide long-term savings.
“This has never been about cost and it’s unfair to suggest anything else,” he said.
“It will cost us some money to implement this and we have funded that within our existing allocation and the fact we are utilising the same resources for a better service means we’re not actually saving money on reducing police numbers.
“This is a legitimate reform to deliver a better service to the people of South Australia — it’s not about cost.”
The Southern District will comprise stations at Christies Beach, Sturt, Aldinga and Netley.
The Northern District will be manned by officers at Elizabeth, Salisbury and Golden Grove stations.
The Eastern District covers the Grenfell St, Hindley St, Norwood and Holden Hill stations.
The Western District will consist of Port Adelaide, Henley Beach, Parks and Glenelg stations.
The anticipated reforms have previously drawn criticism from Police Association of SA president Mark Carroll and members.
However, Mr Carroll was pleased at the government’s “rock-solid commitment” to recruit 313 more officers by 2018.
“If it wasn’t for our organisation, these extra police numbers would not have been delivered — and parts of this reform would almost certainly have been compromised,” he said.
“We certainly had early criticisms of these reforms — we stated that they were chiefly about budget cuts.
“Despite technological gains, reforms, or centralisation, the fundamentals of policing will always will be labour-intensive, and departments simply can’t afford to become complacent when it comes to police numbers, especially on the frontline.”
The reforms include centralising services including the Criminal Investigations Branch.
Mr Stevens said the CIB’s tactical section would now be divided into three parts — one to work as a CIB tactical team and the other two to work as illicit drug teams.
The illicit drug teams will focus on low to mid-level drug trafficking and will “adopt innovative techniques to identify, disrupt and apprehend those committing illicit drug offences”.
Police will also establish a State Response Manager at the Communications Centre which will have access to new technology which will pinpoint the exact location of every police vehicle on an electronic map.
The map is designed to give police a better understanding of which patrol is better positioned to respond to an emergency.
Mr Stevens said a new feature of the reforms would be the introduction of District Policing Teams, which would be allocated to specific suburbs to focus on reducing crime and to build relationships with local communities.
“In much the same way as the highly successful Neighbourhood Policing Teams have worked in some trial areas in Adelaide, this will link a specific team of police with each suburb,” he said.
“The teams have a problem-solving approach to local issues of crime, working closely with victims, providing appropriate police attention to recidivist offenders and actively engaging other agencies, non-government organisation or community group input to local issues.”
Mr Stevens said response teams would focus on acute policing, while the district teams would be tasked to getting to the root cause of the problem affecting the community.
He said he believed the four new metropolitan police zones would allow more police to remain on the road and to more equally balance resources.
During a press conference, Mr Stevens said the reform would result in about 50 more police officers on the frontline, in addition to the government’s commitment to 313 more officers by 2020.
“Those police were currently looking at the best opportunities to enhance some of the existing priorities that we service and looking at emerging priorities to ensure we have police in the right places,” he said.
“My goal is to ensure that regional policing is adequately resourced as well as metropolitan policing so we will be seeing this go to country locations
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