Eight extra police members will be deployed to the Whittlesea Police Service Area, correctly known as “H District –Yarra,” within Victoria Police.
Diamond Creek, also part of the metropolitan ‘H District’ will will deploy an additional 49 officers, including two additional Highway Patrol members, with the deployment of additional officers beginning in May.
Training at the Academy is underway with these new officers to be progressively rolled out to stations and specialist areas from May.
It is the second time Victoria Police has used its Staff Allocation Model (SAM), which was developed in in 2016 and further matured in 2017, to ensure that additional police are being deployed to the areas of highest need.
The SAM was used for the first time last year when a separate injection of 300 additional police, funded in the 2016-17 State Government budget, were allocated predominantly to stations in urban growth areas. These included Wyndham, Brimbank, Hume, Moreland, Whittlesea and Casey. Roll out of these officers started last year and will be complete by April this year.
A number of measures of demand are taken into consideration by the SAM, such as calls for assistance, reported crime, event management and traffic incidents, and the time required to provide these services and Victoria Police will continue to consult with The Police Association as the model is further matured.
“At Victoria Police our absolute focus is on keeping people safe. To do that we need to be the best policing service we can be – agile and responsive to the needs of communities, on the front foot, preventing crime and locking up offenders,” Ashton said.
“That is what we are creating in Victoria – using the significant investments made by the State Government to put more police on the streets with the right training and right equipment, able to respond and prevent crime where and when needed.
“This allocation is just the first of 2,729 additional police being deployed by July 2022. As with all further rounds, these resources have been allocated to the areas of greatest need, as determined by our Staff Allocation Model.
“This is a more sophisticated approach than has previously been used to ensure we are getting maximum benefits from the investments made.”
Deployment decisions for the recruitment program will be made annually, rather than being locked in through a multi-year projection, allowing flexibility and response to changing police demand in the community, stated Victoria Police.
Wangaratta will deploy an additional seven officers, Shepparton five officers and Seymour three.
Kilmore will receive an additional two police officers and Benalla three., with all police stations located in the Police District P2, which includes Kinglake and surrounds.
Kinglake Police are part of the Wangaratta “P2” police district (not Melbourne) with all radio communications going through a central command centre in Wangaratta called ‘VKC Wangaratta’ although most officers refer to -and call in on two way VHF radio – as “VKC Wang.”
The officers will be the first of 2729 additional police officers first announced by the Victorian Government in December 2016.
Whilst monitoring city police operations on UHF radio has become difficult since the encryption of radio signals this is not the case in rural Victoria, where VHF frequencies or the VHF trunking-based State Mobile Radio Network (SMR) -also known as the Government Radio Network (GRN) need to be used to maintain police communications.
Kinglake Ranges News will soon publish all the information you need to know to listen to and monitor police, ambulance and fire brigade operations in regional areas.
Most media outlets, including this one, have monitored these communications for as long as they’ve existed, with many having dedicated staff to do so or an agency such as Media Monitors to provide such on their behalf under contract.
