move along, move along… nothing to see here…

just gotta love “the west” this morning, and its front page story on the terrible incident up in geraldton on christmas night in which a farmer and his family were attacked while enjoying a night at the beach, and the fellow was struck with a cricket bat and killed after his family were attacked by a mob of idiots.

apparently, the police had received a number of calls about the situation, some up to half an hour before the man was killed, but didn’t turn up. here’s the best bit… the acting assistant commissioner, fred gere, had this to say when questioned about why the police did not respond:

“There were a significant amount of phone calls that came through and I’m not here to work out what times and dates and what other police resources were tied up at the time.”

ok, fella… here’s where i think you have a major misunderstanding as to what your job description is… this is EXACTLY your job, to work out why the police did not adequately respond to a murder happening in a very public space. good grief! what a ridiculous thing to say.

he goes on to say,

“It’s sufficient for me to say that the police response was more than adequate and on the information we received I’m more than satisfied with the police response.”

well, i’m so glad he’s satisfied, but that’s not the point is it? i’m sure the victim’s family aren’t so thrilled, the folks who took the time to call the police probably don’t think it was good enough, and i (as a member of the general public who likes to take my family to the beach) don’t think it’s good enough. again, a ridiculous thing for a senior police officer to say.

he’s happy, so that’s it… we can all move on now… nothing to see here…

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under life. You can feed this entry. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses

  1. A friend had her house broken into a few months ago, then a week later heard noises outside her house late at night.
    She called the cops, we came round to hang out with her, and at 1am after not seeing the Police she rang to ask where they were.
    They replied that they’d driven past, seen no trouble and didn’t bother to let her know.

    Gaz - December 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am

  2. I guess that we don’t know what those callers to the police had to say.

    The problem started with a group of men stealing beer from someone else’s esky. If you were a police officer would you think that it was a priority to prevent beer theft? We don’t know what other calls required response from the police at the same time.

    In hindsight we know that a lot more was happening but if the callers to the police were reporting the initial problem the coppers would have no way of knowing that a murder was about to be committed.

    It’s a tragedy and we all wish that there were enough police to attend to every situation with urgency but without all the facts I don’t think we can point the finger at the police.

    Rodney Olsen - December 29th, 2007 at 11:31 am

  3. i understand what you’re saying, and i certainly understand that the police may well have had a bunch of other things going. my beef is with the comments made by this senior police officer, which just seem to me to be stupid and inane… he’s being asked legitimate questions about why things didn’t happen, and he just pretty much fobs them off with a “i’m satisfied it was done right…” sort of answer, which i don’t think is at all adequate. he needs to be able to give a decent reckoning for the situation and his attitude that he’s not there to explain things is not good enough, i don’t think. not near enough.

    as you say, there may well have been extenuating circumstances and other complicating factors… fine. knowing what i know about the difficulties of police work, that’s understandable. but i think this bloke’s response is woefully inadequate and i would hope we (as the public) get some far better answers than this, and it sounds more like a “we don’t really want to explain ourselves” reaction.

    ob1 - December 29th, 2007 at 11:37 am

  4. No one is going to deny that police are not human, and make mistakes, and at this time of year, they have a lot on their plate.
    But I agree with Ob that it seems denial and political spin in the order of the day. Why not just say, “what has happened is a tradgedy for the family, We are investigating the police response”

    Mark E - December 29th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

  5. anyone wondering if the West, true to it’s incredibly low standard of news reporting, hasn’t simply arranged their article and quotes in the most sensational manner possible?

    let’s do everyone a favour and not even bite when this sort of stuff is pasted across the front page of such a consistently poor source of truth.

    otherendup - December 31st, 2007 at 10:39 am

  6. c’mon… are you saying that the only copy of “the west” that i’ve bought in months could have been wrong?! misleading?!

    ob1 - December 31st, 2007 at 11:24 am