Need a good honest - Queensland Police Union

Metro South Region Roundup
TONY COLLINS
STOP THE MADNESS
Times are tough, and they are only going to get tougher. If my predictions are correct, by the time this is printed,
our budgets will have been cut and the QPS will have had to divest itself of more administration officers. So it is
time to put this in perspective.
When I talk to our officers, they don’t
want much: they just want to be able to
do their job. But to be able to do their
job properly, now—more than ever—
it takes time. Over the years, I have
written a number of articles about how
we have become less efficient due to
new processes and computer systems.
“Time is increasingly
becoming a
commodity that is
worth its weight in
gold, because this job
is increasingly being
run on the rest days
and unpaid overtime
of its workers.”
And in our modern world, time is
increasingly becoming a commodity
that is worth its weight in gold, because
this job is increasingly being run on the
rest days and unpaid overtime of its
workers.
To the Senior Sergeants and Sergeants:
I want you to think back to the ‘good
old days’ and ask yourself how many
times you came in on your days off
to complete a full brief of evidence,
or stayed back late on a shift with the
excuse of ‘I just want to finish off this
bit of paperwork’. It wasn’t right back
then, and it isn’t right now.
The age-old adage of ‘but that is the
way we have always done it’ has got
to stop being used as an excuse. You
are now in a real position of influence
and power to ensure that the next
generation of QPS officers don’t have
to work under the same conditions we
did in the ‘good old days’.
You people are now the Officers in
Charge, DDOs, and shift supervisors.
You have the ability to stop the
madness.
Because yes, it is insanity. The
definition of insanity is ‘doing the
same thing over and over again and
expecting different results’ (Benjamin
Franklin). We, the workers, are doing
the same thing over and over again in
each generation of police officers, yet
we expect better working conditions.
The insanity is that the more you do the
unpaid overtime, the more you work on
your days off, the more you use your
own mobile phone to do name checks...
Then the more you grease the wheels
of this broken bureaucratic mess with
your own personal time. Your working
conditions are going to remain the
same, or deteriorate.
You have the ability to influence the
next generation, to get them to say, ‘It
is not OK to give my own time to keep
this organisation running. My time is
important to me, and the QPS needs to
respect that’. The ball is in your court.
DISCIPLINE PROCESS
Anyone who has had any involvement
with the disciplinary system knows
that: 1) it is convoluted, 2) it is
time consuming, and 3) it is a very
subjective decision-making process
based on the opinion of the prescribed
officer.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want
it fixed. There are a number of faults
with our disciplinary system, and I was
hoping that it would be fixed under the
new Commissioner, Mr Stewart.
But when I watched him on You
Tube (yes, all of Gen Y can stop
laughing at me, I do know how to
work a computer), I was nothing but
dismayed.
“We are doing the same thing over and over
again in each generation of police officers, yet
we expect better working conditions.”
The QPS has suffered organisational
insanity that has originated from
goodness knows where, and it is now
being passed like a mantle to be worn
from one generation of police officers
to the next.
So to the Officers in Charge, DDOs,
and shift supervisors, I challenge you
to be advocates of change. Stop the
madness.
The Commissioner designate (as
he was at the time) was in a press
conference, and he basically stated
that ‘often’ it is the officer’s fault that
disciplinary matters take as long as
they do.
The definition of ‘often’ is ‘frequently
or many times’. Mr Stewart then went
on to explain that officers are ‘often’
stressed, and that this prolonged the
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Queensland Police Union Journal October 2012