Forensic police will now spend an additional 30 minutes at break-in scenes to improve investigation outcomes following a successful trial by a Logan officer.
The officer in charge of Logan scenes of crime, senior sergeant Lisa Weller, along with two colleagues set out to improve police responses to break-and-enter offences four years ago.
Drawing on research from the University of Queensland, Ms Weller and her scenes of crime (SOC) team began spending an extra half-hour at crime scenes to gather forensic evidence and intelligence.
Ms Weller said this diverted responsibilities away from general-duty officers, who were then able to respond to more urgent matters.
“The project was leveraged off the back of the previous police commissioner Katarina Carroll’s service delivery redesign project, where she realised we were not meeting demand in a lot of areas,” Snr Sgt Weller said.
“General duties had increased calls for domestic family violence and property offences, but forensic officers can actually fill that void – because obviously we are police officers first and scenes of crime officers second.”
Ms Weller’s team also committed to spreading crime-prevention messages throughout the community.
Police say the project diverted almost 90 per cent of break-in offences from frontline police and increased the amount of fingerprints found at crime scenes by 47 per cent.
A survey showed 96 per cent community satisfaction with police response at crime scenes.
“I expect that comes from not having five officers in your kitchen the morning after you’ve made a crime report,” Ms Weller said.
“Instead, you’re having one officer who can do the whole job – forensic examination as well as provide reassurance and a crime prevention message as well.
“We fill both the forensic role and crime prevention role, and it doesn’t take much to do both roles because they’re one and the same.”
Last month detective acting inspector Glen Antonie told MyCity Logan the city’s youth crime and protection units were mostly dealing with property-related offences.
“Mainly opportunistic sort of stuff in relation to property crime,” Act Insp Antonie said.
“It can range from what we might deem to be low level – anything from a simple shop steal – right up to quite serious, protracted crime.”
Senior sergeant Weller said Logan was a good location to trial the project because of the “breadth and depth” of crime.
“The reason Logan was chosen is because we have a spread of crime, and it’s a really busy district, whether it’s property or person offences,” she said.
Now the new Logan model will be implemented state-wide and is projected to save frontline police more than 187,000 response hours each year.
Ms Weller’s project was also highly commended at the Premier’s Awards for Excellence in the Delivering Education and Social Services category.
Ms Weller praised the diligence and work ethic of her officers involved in the trial.
