By Charlene Gatt and Vanessa Chircop
FOOTSCRAY Police will beef up its numbers in coming months, with another two officers on the way.
Victoria Police last week announced 275 new frontline police across the state, with 13 assigned to North West Metro Region Division One – which encompasses Maribyrnong, Hobsons Bay and Wyndham.
From that, two police officers are going to Maribyrnong, two are going to Hobsons Bay and the remaining nine will go to Wyndham.
In Maribyrnong, one constable or senior constable and one sergeant will join the ranks sometime before 30 June.
Acting Superintendent Ian Geddes told Star officers were assigned according to a range of factors, and said the need was currently greater in Wyndham than in Maribyrnong.
“There’s a number of things that go into determining where they go, the population and the projected population growth – we look at the ratio of police to members of the community, we look at the need in relation to work load and crime and we determine where we may have had some shrinkage over time,” he said.
“We’ve done fairly well overall with 13 police out of this part of the allocation.
“Additional police mean additional police on the road, so that helps us conduct our suppression activities that reduce crime.”
Acting Superintendent Geddes said Wyndham received the lion’s share of resources to build up the new police station at Wyndham North to a 24-hour service.
“(In Wyndham) we’ve just put a new police station there… so it’s our intention to build the capacity of that police station to ensure that we have a 24/7 service eventually being delivered from it.”
Wyndham Mayor Kim McAliney said the announcement was a major coup for Wyndham.
“It’s absolutely fantastic. It means our advocacy program is obviously working and police command are recognising that Wyndham is an area of need,” Cr McAliney said.
Acting Deputy Commissioner of Strategy and Organisational Development Lucinda Nolan said: “When we allocate our police numbers, we look at population size in growing areas and large regional areas, current crime levels and emerging crime trends. We factor in which areas are facing high operational demand and what the community concerns are.”
The new police officers are expected to begin work over the next few months.
Recent crime statistics for Maribyrnong show a 53 per cent spike in home robberies, a 30 per cent rise in robberies, a 23 per cent spike in drug offences and a 17 per cent increase in assaults.
