What has Frontline First achieved?

Frontline First has produced some great results for the WA Police. There's been a significant improvement in our performance and noticeable increase in our police presence on the streets.

Burglary and motor vehicle theft offences are the lowest they've been in 15 years. During 2005-06, reported crimes in several categories have decreased including homicide, robbery, burglary and motor vehicles, while clearance rates for nearly all offences have increased.

New, dedicated mobile policing units were created and now patrol our streets to tackle anti-social behaviour and enforce traffic legislation.

Tough anti-hoon laws implemented by the State Government in September 2004, in consultation with the WA Police, have resulted in hundreds of reckless and dangerous drivers having their cars impounded.

The new Police Assistance Centre lessened the administrative and call-taking load on our officers, freeing up their time for the frontline. The Centre began around-the-clock operations in April 2005 and has enabled the WA Police to deliver a more responsive and efficient service to the community. The Centre receives an average of 40,000 calls from the public each month.

The Report on Government Services 2007, released by the Federal Government, shows almost 92 per cent of the WA population feel 'safe' or 'very safe' when home alone during the day and 81 per cent feel 'safe' or 'very safe' when at home alone after dark.

WA Police rated the highest over other police jurisdictions on honesty, with 78.6 per cent of our community either 'agreeing' or 'strongly agreeing' that our police are honest. The report also showed public satisfaction with the WA Police has risen 11 percentage points to 73.8 per cent, which is a relative increase of 18 per cent.

More durable and professional uniforms were introduced, which increased morale among officers and support toward the organisation. Red-tape has been slashed, freeing up officers' time for frontline work and with higher levels of managerial accountability than ever, we are ensuring that our police deliver a consistently high quality service to the community.

Our plans for the future

The Frontline First guiding philosophy has become the bedrock of our corporate thinking and is now firmly embedded within our organisation. Although some great results have been produced, there are still a number of challenges ahead of us.

Our plan is to continue advancing and implementing new strategies that will improve our overall service delivery, to ensure that the strong forward momentum we have established with Frontline First continues.

Our focus areas

• Continuing to transition the culture of the WA Police into one that is performance-based, as opposed to the old 'rank and file' hierarchy of the past.
   
• Developing new policing standards, which determine optimum tasking levels for a district; having contingency plans to enable optimum tasking levels at any given time and setting frontline service delivery standards – a first for the WA Police.
   
• Improving the deployment of policing human resources, by implementing a new human resource allocation model.
   
• Improving road safety, particularly in regional Western Australia.
   
• Cultural change, through improved leadership, accountability, performance management and adhering to corruption-resistance principles. Crime detection and clearance rates will also be enhanced at the frontline, as we implement the recommendations of a number of reviews relating to intelligence, property management and forensic analysis.

From the Commissioner

While our crime rates are one performance measure, the other is how the WA public perceives us – how safe the members of our community feel in their homes and in public places.

And this is the real yardstick by which the community measures our effectiveness as an organisation.

This is where we'll continue to direct our energy and resources.

The WA Police has come a long way in recent years and we still have a long way to go moving forward.

But I'm confident that we've put in the groundwork needed to get through the inevitable challenges that lie ahead of us.

Our police officers are recognised Australia-wide and indeed, around the world and their skills are highly sought after.

They are professionals, recognised as being professionals and are doing a terrific job.

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