Officers are being pulled from front-line policing to do administrative work and ‘babysit’ prisoners, according to retired homicide squad detective Charlie Bezzina.
The veteran former police officer, who worked on high-profile cases such as the deaths of gangster Alphonse Gangitano and cricketer David Hookes, will speak at next month’s Altona SES 30th anniversary dinner.
Mr Bezzina, who spent nearly 38 years in the force, also investigated the Wales King ‘society murders’, serial killer Paul Denyer and the child killer dubbed
Mr Cruel.
Mr Bezzina, a former Altona North sergeant and drug taskforce member at Footscray, says he plans, in his speech, to cover investigative techniques and what the lot of a police officer is really like.
He said police were increasingly doing administrative duties that used to be performed by civilian staff. “The fact is, the government has stripped some significant finance from the police department and I believe it might have been $60-odd million last budget,” Mr Bezzina said. “They’ve also stripped unsworn positions or public servants, as it were, but they stated that that will not affect frontline policing.
“But who does the work of the people who are no longer working for the police, the support personnel?
“They [police] are overworked and understaffed. It’s got to a stage now where they’re instructed not to wash cars, don’t empty major rubbish bins. They’re trying to cut back as much expenditure as possible.
“You’ll never get a uniform police member, from the chief commissioner down, being critical of the government [because] it is a criminal offence.” He said officers were also forced to escort and supervise prisoners – jobs that could be performed by private security companies such as G4S, which manages Port Phillip Prison.
Mr Bezzina will speak at the SES dinner, which is restricted to past and present SES volunteers, at Kooringal Golf Club, Altona, on November 9 from 6pm.
» RSVP to Merridee Hardinge on 9315 9464.
