By Vanessa Chircop
HOBSONS Bay is set to receive just two out of the 13 new police assigned to the Hobsons Bay, Maribyrnong and Wyndham areas.
Maribyrnong was also assigned two extra police, with Wyndham receiving the lion’s share of nine new police.
Acting Superintendent Ian Geddes said he was happy with the allocation.
“There’s a number of things that go into determining where they (police) 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.”
Acting Supt Geddes said nine policing going to Wyndham reflected the size and the need in the area.
“Seven of those allocated to Wyndham will be at Wyndham North as part of that move to try and increase the numbers of police at Wyndham North to improve the service delivery there.”
“(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.”
Hobsons Bay Inspector Bill Mathers said he was also happy to receive two extra police, with Hobsons Bay not receiving any additional police in last September’s allocation.
“We’re very happy to be given the two, that will help us increase our capacity to provide a service to the community,” he said.
“We’re always grateful for more police – we still have very low crime rates and we’ve gone over 12 months without a fatality, so we understand the rational why other policing areas are getting more staff than us and we’re quite comfortable with that.
“The fact that we’re getting two members, which one of those will be a detective and the other a sergeant, we think that’s really good and will help us to not only maintain the police service we got, but hopefully improve on it.”
In the West, Brimbank and Melton received 18 extra police.
