Libertarians lash out as Police review themselves
The Australian Council for Civil Liberties (ACCL) says the Queensland Government is conducting a secret overhaul of its police force.
Police are reviewing their own disciplinary process, and some say they are trying to make life easier for themselves.
Civil libertarians are angered by what they see as a move to change police discipline processes without public consultation.
The Queensland Police Service (QPS) says it is working on a draft model for new ways to deal with allegations of misconduct, and will deliver its recommendations to the State Government by the end of the year.
Reports say QPS wants to give powers to managerial officers that would allow them to reprimand staff for misdemeanours or performance-based complaints, but escalating allegations of corruption and official misconduct would be moved to an independent body.
The Police say they want to streamline less serious misconduct including broad performance-based issues, while keeping the bigger issues for full independent review.
The Queensland Police Union says the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) should be taken out of the discipline process entirely, to be replaced with a new body.
ACCL president Terry O'Gorman has told the ABC that the public should be more involved.
“This should not be a secret process done behind closed doors at the Queensland Police Service with a high level of input by the union,” he said.
“There's a real risk that the very important changes that were put into effect in the Fitzgerald Report in 1989 will go backwards.
“The Queensland Police Union has no made secret of the fact that it would like to wind back those changes.
“This current [State] Government detests the Fitzgerald reform process,” he said.
“Queenslanders have to say to the Government; ‘we're not going to see the police complaint process go back to the joke that it was, back to the farce that it was in the nineteen-seventies and eighties.”