More than 1,000 officers have left the New South Wales Police over the past year, leaving the demoralised and understrength force in crisis.
A Budget Estimates hearing last week revealed the force is 2,279 officers below its authorised strength, with the gap more than doubling since December 2023.
Another 1,362 officers are on long-term sick leave, and according to the NSW Police Force 2023 People Matter Employee Survey only 39% of officers would recommend the force as a place to work.
Shadow Minister for Police Paul Toole said the state’s police force was in rapid decline.
“Policing here in NSW is in dire straits, and the figures released today show there are more officers leaving the force than are being recruited, which should serve as a wake-up call to the Police Minister,” Mr Toole said last Friday.
“Minister Catley failed to negotiate a fair pay deal for police in July, leaving them in the dark about their future while morale is at an all-time low.
“These are very sobering statistics, and the Minns Labor Government needs to address this situation as a matter of urgency.”
The statistics emerged after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a $400 million Pacific Policing Initiative to train police officers in Pacific Island nations, and comes after NSW Police Force hit by a series of scandals.
Earlier this year the force, which regularly panders to the so-called LGBT community, was banned from marching in Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras after a homosexual officer was charged with murdering his former lover and that man’s new boyfriend with his police weapon.
And in July the NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission that a high-ranking officer was treated “leniently” after crashing his police vehicle while drunk. The senior officer has pleaded not guilty, but the courts have suppressed his name for 40 years.
In May a report found that NSW Police handed out fines of up to $5,000 to 3,628 children for breaching the state’s draconian Covid restrictions.
Then-Police Commissioner Mick Fuller enthusiastically enforced the so-called health orders, at one point telling officers they would not be held to account for wrongly issuing fines.
NSW is not the only Australian state with police recruitment and misconduct issues.
A damning internal fraud and corruption review found that in 2022 alone there were more than 1,000 misconduct reports from inside the Queensland Police Service (QPS), including hundreds of allegations of violence.
The QPS is so desperate for new officers that in 2023 it launched a global recruitment drive to find 500 foreign nationals a year for five years to join the force. They are not required to be Australian citizens or permanent residents.
Last year South Australia announced plans to allow 200 officers from overseas to fill frontline shortages, and Western Australia will also recruit hundreds of foreign officers over the next five years.
Pictured above are officers posing with a drag queen for “Wear it Purple Day”, an initiative that encourages minors to be homosexual, and gay alleged double murderer Beau Lamarre.
