Review of Community Policing

2010

The scope of this review includes key community policing functions - missing persons and licensing services. It also includes one area - sexual offences and child abuse - where Victoria Police performs a multi-disciplinary function, encompassing, but not limited to, law enforcement and crime prevention, and community policing as a method plays an important role. While other Victoria Police units with community policing functions/aspects were visited, this report is limited to those three key areas.

This is an atypical review in the sense that CLEDS has to date concentrated on reviewing overall Victoria Police compliance with individual sets of the CLEDS Standards or the general compliance of individual law enforcement data systems. This review looks at the general level of information security in particular areas of Victoria Police that carry out community policing functions.

The review finds clear evidence that members of Victoria Police working in these three areas have heightened awareness of the sensitive nature of the data they obtain and hold and of the consequent issues of privacy and security. No instances were found of any serious failings. We draw particular attention to the seriousness with which members dealing with sexual offences and child abuse take the security of large quantities of highly sensitive information and the diligence which the Licensing Services Division has applied to reviewing its security procedures in the light of the CLEDS Standards.

The single major issue for all three areas reviewed remains the security surrounding the data systems on which they rely - the Interpose intelligence system (Interpose) and the Licensing and Registration System (LARS). CLEDS is in the process of auditing the security of Interpose and will audit LARS in 2010 - 11. The findings of those audits will complement the current review.