Fly-in-fly-out specialist officers will target crime hotspots across Queensland in a major state government effort to cut crime rates and prevent repeat offending.
Operation Whiskey Legion, announced on March 27, will have specialist unit officers working with local police on continuous patrols, targeting vehicle theft, property crime, robbery, assault, and Domestic and Family Violence (DFV).
The Operation will start in Ipswich and Logan before expanding to regional areas in the following weeks.
Premier Steven Miles said the program has shown success in several policing districts already.
“This is about preventing crime, intervening early, and intervening with offenders before their offending escalates so that we can stop that offending in its tracks.”
He didn’t disclose the specific number of additional deployed officers, but he said the “surge” would be sufficient enough to support the thousands of police in Queensland.
Leadership Change After Carjacking Incident
It’s the first initiative under Acting Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski, who assumed the role after Katarina Carroll’s resignation last month.Ms. White’s husband has since delivered a condemnation of the Miles Labor government, accusing them of culpability in his wife’s stabbing.
“The labour government of this state, every member in that cabinent there, when my wife got stabbed in the heart, they all had a hand on that knife together,” hesaid.The family demanded law reforms in honor of Ms. White’s memory.
It comes as Queensland faces a 6 percent surge in youth crime, with 10,878 offenders aged between 10 and 17 years in 2022-23, with youth offenders accounting for 13 percent of total offenders.
Expansion of Crime Prevention Initiatives
“Bring the Beat,” a statewide mobile police beat service, and several other crime prevention initiatives will expand as part of the Operation.Bring the Beat enables the public to request a mobile police beat, or base, in their local area for high-visibility presence in hotspots, as well as greater public access and support from policing resources.
Beats have been deployed over 50 times in 14 different suburbs of Townsville since its launch last November.
Operation Whiskey Unison, Taskforce Guardian, over 165,000 crime hotspot patrols, shopping centre walk-throughs, bail compliance checks, and community engagements will also see an expansion.
Operation Whiskey Unison has resulted in over 11,300 people arrested on more than 18,200 charges through high-visibility patrols and activities since March 2023.
The latest data from Whiskey Unison revealed 4,100 of those arrests were of children.
Labor and LNP Clash Ahead of October Election
The Miles Labor government and the Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP) have both campaigned hard on dealing with crime ahead of the next state election in October.In the LNP’s latest move, opposition police and community safety spokesperson Dan Purdi criticised Labor’s new Operation, saying it lacked the necessary police resources to address crime and ensure community safety.
“I have no doubt our local police and community would like to see some police fly in ... for a weekend. But what happens when they leave? We need to give our local police the resources and the laws they need to do their job and keep us safe,” he said.
The pledged Making Queensland Safer Laws will involve eliminating detention as a last resort, prioritising victims’ rights in sentencing laws, and guaranteeing that crime victims receive automatic case updates.
