The Police Discipline Reforms which have just passed the Queensland Parliament deal with justified Police Union concerns about unacceptable delays in finalising the investigation of complaints against police but does nothing to address public dissatisfaction with the fact that most complaints against police in Queensland are still investigated by the police themselves.
In introducing the Police Discipline Reform Bill in early 2019 Police Minister Mark Ryan said that there is a lack of police officer and public confidence in the current discipline system.
The Police Service Discipline Reform Bill was described at the time of the introduction of the Bill into Queensland Parliament as the first major reform of Queensland police discipline since 1990. The 1990 changes reflected recommendations made by the Fitzgerald Report which reported in 1989 as to changes that were needed with police discipline.
The Discipline Reform Bill particularly addressed legitimate complaints that the Police Union have had for some time as to the unacceptable delays in complaints against police being finalised and the unnecessary negative consequences suffered by police as a result of those long delays.
The basic Queensland model of investigating complaints against police however remains flawed.
The Police Reform Bill deals only with the lack of officer confidence but does nothing to address the lack of public confidence in the Queensland Police discipline system. The Fitzgerald Enquiry recommended the implementation of a (then) new Police discipline and complaints model and the Criminal Justice Commission in 1990 established a completely new system of investigating complaints against police where most complaints were investigated by the then Criminal Justice Commission which was the earliest name of what is now called the Crime and Corruption Commission.
It was essentially the Fitzgerald model that most complaints against police should be investigated by a separate agency and that was put into effect by the establishment of the Criminal Justice Commission. However, over time, the Criminal Justice Commission which was later known as the Crime and Misconduct Commission and now the Crime and Corruption Commission has morphed into a super police force using permanent standing Royal Commission powers to investigate organised crime.
While the Crime and Corruption Commission can assume responsibility for and take over an investigation into police misconduct, from what is available in the Crime and Corruption Commission annual reports, there is very little evidence that that happens very often.
An example of the conflicted role of the Crime and Corruption Commission in respect of its organised crime fighting arm and its supervision of police misconduct role is contained in the most recent report of the Crime and Corruption Commission.
The most recent 2018 – 2019 Crime and Corruption Commission Annual Report focuses heavily on the Crime and Corruption Commission’s role in investigating crime and corruption but devotes only a very small part of its report to excessive use of force by the police which was a topic addressed with greater prominence in the last two annual reports.
Indeed, disappointingly, the most recent Crime and Corruption Commission annual report states:-
“As we have noticed a decrease in allegations, excessive use of force will no longer be a primary area of focus in 2019 – 2020.”
Therefore, while the legitimate complaints of the Police Union about unfair and excessive delays experienced by police in having complaints against them finalised has been addressed in the Discipline Reform Bill the public concerns that most complaints against police are still investigated by police themselves with limited oversight by the Crime and Corruption Commission remains an ongoing problem.