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Transcript

DV Failures. Racism. Bullying. Now They Scrap the Survey. · The Slippery Slope

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Slippery Slope podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm Jay Fallon. Obviously today I'm going to be
• 0:05
  talking about something that has become a defining feature of the
• 0:08
  Queensland Police Service, their inability or refusal to face
• 0:14
  tough, unflattering truths about themselves.
• 0:17
  Because this latest move, scrapping the integrity survey
• 0:22
  right when public trust collapses is not an isolated
• 0:26
  event. It's part of a long, predictable
• 0:29
  pattern. A pattern of ignoring reviews,
• 0:33
  shelving reports, burying findings, and pretending
• 0:38
  problems don't exist. Domestic violence failures,
• 0:42
  bullying, racism, cultural rot, leadership paralysis.
• 0:48
  Every time the truth gets too loud, QPS simply turns down the
• 0:52
  volume. So today going to talk about it.
• 0:57
  Get my street So let's start with the latest scandal.
• 1:10
  The National Survey of Community Satisfaction with Policing, the
• 1:14
  one that measured police trust, fairness, honesty and confidence
• 1:19
  in reporting DV domestic violence, has been discontinued
• 1:24
  right when the numbers showed only 53 percent, 53%, think
• 1:29
  police treat people fairly, only 57% think police are honest and
• 1:36
  only 61% feel confident reporting domestic violence, all
• 1:43
  far below the 75% target. So what does QPS, the Queensland
• 1:48
  Police Service? What do QPS do?
• 1:51
  Do they confront the problem? That's a good question.
• 1:53
  Do they reform? Do they acknowledge the cultural
• 1:57
  issues? Not none of it.
• 1:59
  They scrap the survey. This is not transparency.
• 2:03
  This is avoidance. Remember at the end of every,
• 2:06
  whenever the reporting of an officer has done something
• 2:08
  wrong, he's going to court and something they have that little
• 2:09
  spiel down the bottom. Hey, you know, in our commitment
• 2:12
  for transparency, they always say they want transparency.
• 2:18
  But hey, when when the rubber hits the road, no, they don't
• 2:21
  really want transparency. Let's look back at the history.
• 2:24
  What else has gone on with QPS over the last or 5-6 years?
• 2:29
  I suppose you got domestic violence failures.
• 2:32
  The ABC reported that DV Connect, not just the ABC,
• 2:36
  others as well. That DV Connect, the state's
• 2:39
  main domestic violence helpline, had thousands of calls going
• 2:43
  unanswered. Women fleeing violence couldn't
• 2:47
  get help. Victims were left hanging.
• 2:50
  Lines were at risk. And what did QPS do?
• 2:54
  They promised reviews, they promised reform, they promised
• 2:58
  cultural change. But nothing changes.
• 3:01
  Because when nothing changes, as I say, nothing changes, you have
• 3:05
  the QPS Domestic Violence Inquiry.
• 3:08
  The independent inquiry into QPS handling of domestic violence
• 3:14
  found systemic misogyny, cultural resistance to change
• 3:19
  because they don't want to change, officers mocking
• 3:22
  victims, failures to investigate and leadership Leadership
• 3:27
  unwilling to confront the rot. The reporting was damning.
• 3:32
  And what happened? You had a press conference.
• 3:35
  We had a few apologies, a few we acknowledge the findings, they
• 3:40
  all acknowledge everything. But then silence, complete radio
• 3:43
  silence. And then we also had bullying
• 3:46
  and racism within the Queensland Police Service itself.
• 3:50
  The internal review into bullying and racism found
• 3:53
  widespread widespread bullying of other of junior officers,
• 4:00
  racist behaviour tolerated, toxic leadership, retaliation
• 4:07
  against whistleblowers and a culture we're speaking up meant
• 4:12
  career suicide. Again we had promises of reform.
• 4:16
  Again, nothing changed. Then we had the delayed Police
• 4:21
  Integrity Unit. The Crime and Corruption
• 4:24
  Commission chair publicly expressed frustration that QPS
• 4:29
  was dragging, dragging its feet on establishing an independent
• 4:33
  integrity unit. Why?
• 4:36
  Because QPS leadership doesn't want, doesn't want external
• 4:41
  oversight. They want to investigate
• 4:44
  themselves or continue investigating themselves.
• 4:47
  But that's what they do. They want to investigate
• 4:49
  themselves. They want to police themselves.
• 4:52
  They want to judge themselves and now they don't even want to
• 4:56
  measure themselves. The real issue, the real issue
• 5:01
  is that QPS, the Queensland Police Service, can't handle the
• 5:05
  truth. Every organization has problems.
• 5:08
  Every institution has failures, every service has blind spots.
• 5:14
  But healthy organisations confront those failures.
• 5:19
  GPS avoids them. They treat every negative
• 5:22
  finding as APR problem and not a cultural problem.
• 5:26
  They treat every review as an inconvenience and not an
• 5:30
  opportunity. They treat every report as a
• 5:34
  threat and not a warning. This is not incompetence.
• 5:38
  This is institutional self protection.
• 5:42
  And it's dangerous because when police refuse, the police
• 5:46
  service refuses to face the truth about themselves.
• 5:51
  The public pays the price, victims pay the price,
• 5:54
  whistleblowers pay the price, communities pay the price and
• 5:58
  trust collapses. Remember, I was a police officer
• 6:03
  with Queensland Police Service. I worked inside QPS, I worked
• 6:06
  inside the Crime and Corruption Commission for most of my time
• 6:09
  within QPS. I saw the culture, I saw the
• 6:12
  leadership, I saw the resistance to accountability.
• 6:15
  And I'll say I will say QPS does not fear crime.
• 6:20
  QPS fears criticism. They fear scrutiny.
• 6:25
  They fear oversight. They fear transparency as much
• 6:29
  as they might say they want. They want transparency.
• 6:32
  And they put out these reports saying This Is Us being
• 6:35
  transparent. They fear transparency because
• 6:38
  transparency exposes culture, Transparency exposes leadership.
• 6:44
  Transparency exposes failures. Scrapping the integrity survey
• 6:50
  is not a bureaucratic decision, it's a cultural decision.
• 6:54
  It's QPS saying we don't want to know what the public thinks of
• 6:58
  us because we already know and we don't want it written down.
• 7:05
  Institutions that hide from truth are choosing darkness
• 7:10
  scripts to teachers that truth is in the light.
• 7:14
  You cannot fix what you refuse to face, you cannot heal what
• 7:19
  you refuse to acknowledge, and you cannot restore trust while
• 7:23
  hiding the evidence of mistrust. The Bible warns repeatedly about
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  leaders who refuse correction, and that's what we're seeing
• 7:33
  here. Not humility, not repentance,
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  not reform, but avoidance. The Queensland Police Service
• 7:39
  didn't scrap the integrity survey because it was
• 7:43
  discontinued. They scrapped it because the
• 7:45
  results were embarrassing. They scrapped it because
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  accountability is uncomfortable. And they scrapped it because
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  transparency exposes culture. And until QPS stops hiding from
• 7:59
  the mirror, nothing will change. Of course, this is all just my
• 8:04
  opinion. I'm Jay Fallon, and thanks for
• 8:07
  listening to the Slippery Slope Podcast.
• 8:11
  And my