Six additional police officers, including five first response officers, will start work in Orange from July 1.
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The new positions will include four constables, a sergeant and a specialist Child Protection Register officer.
The announcement followed negotiations between Member for Orange Phil Donato with NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller that were set up last year and took place last month.
The Orange Branch of the NSW Police Association also instigated a dispute regarding the lack of police to properly staff their shifts and respond to crime.
Orange Branch chairman Adam Piffarelli said last year the state government and Commissioner Fuller announced an extra 1500 police to be rolled out across NSW for the next four years.
This increase [in Orange] will mean an increase of 60 per cent to the first response capabilities these extra five officers to our front line allow smarter strategies in terms of rostering.
- Police Association of NSW Orange Branch chairman Adam Piffarelli
"This increase [in Orange] will mean an increase of 60 per cent to the first response capabilities these extra five officers to our front line allow smarter strategies in terms of rostering," Mr Piffarelli said
"We are able to step away from an antiquated system and adopt a new system, which means more police that can respond to jobs within the area and police that are now going to have better rostering practices meaning they are well rested so they can go out and tackle crime as it happens."
He said amended rostering practices will see an initial 40 per cent increase in first response capabilities of police.
Mr Piffarelli said following the meeting, Western Region Assistant Commissioner Geoff McKechnie was tasked to look at the rostering, jobs police respond to and complete a workload analysis.
"As we've been saying for the last six months in the Strength Campaign, Orange does have the lowest police to population ration in the state," he said.
Over the recent summer we’ve all been concerned about the spate of car thefts and property crime here in Orange, which the overworked and under resourced men and women in blue have struggled to control.
- Phil Donato
"By getting these extra five that does alter things for us but that doesn't mean that we stop, we still need to get extra staff here so we can increase our proactivity response.
"These numbers are going to increase our first response so when people pick up the phone and call police for help our uniform officers are the first ones that arrive.
"Extra officers are going to increase our productivity in terms of our person searches, move-ons, drug detections and that's what we are going to be tackling over the next three years to increase those numbers to get us where we need to be."
He said the new sergeant would either be promoted or transferred from another location while the four constables would come from the police academy.
However, Mr Piffarelli said there's still a lot of work to do in terms of proactive policing and the initial request was for 12 officers.
"What we need is at least a regional enforcement squad or a substantial increase to our target action group which is our proactivity unit, plus a dog unit as well, which is what we will be fighting for over the next three years as these extra staff come on line," he said.
Mr Donato welcomed the announcement and said including the six new officers, he has helped work towards and have delivered 10 extra police for Orange in the past 12 months but "we certainly need to do more".
“The four additional police officers I negotiated the delivery of to the Orange police station in April 2018 just wasn’t enough," Mr Donato said.
“Over the recent summer we’ve all been concerned about the spate of car thefts and property crime here in Orange, which the overworked and under resourced men and women in blue have struggled to control."
He said the negotiated offer was accepted on the proviso a review would be undertaken within 12 months to determine if police numbers are adequate.
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