Canberra's police will need to draw more Indigenous recruits if they want to build trust with communities and drive down the high proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in detention, according to an ACT Indigenous body.
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The number of Indigenous employees in the territory's police force has hovered around 1 per cent of members in the past four years despite efforts to attract and retain more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers.
ACT policing employs 14 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders, seven of whom are sworn officers, which is 1.48 per cent of workers.
That's only two more staff than in 2011, when 1.1 per cent of the force's employees identified as Indigenous.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elected body chairman Rod Little said those staffing levels were "at odds" with Indigenous detainee numbers and showed some current approaches to recruitment and engagement weren't effective.
"I know police who are involved with communities, but when you want to have a relationship through community with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the best thing you can do is have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees," Mr Little said.
The representative body last week signed a new partnership with the ACT government to reduce recidivism and boost access to services in a bid to address the over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal system.
Indigenous people account for 17.7 per cent of people in detention in the capital despite accounting for less than 1.5 per cent of the ACT population.
An ACT policing spokesman would not be drawn on whether its Indigenous employee figures were good enough, but said the force needed to be representative of the community and recruit from a diverse range of backgrounds if members wanted to "build trust and positive relationships".
The spokesman said the AFP, which takes in the territory's police force, had an optional reporting mechanism for employees to identify as Indigenous which meant the real percentage could be higher.
The most recent territory figures also compared poorly to NSW police, which had 3 per cent of its force made up by Indigenous employees last year, up from 2.3 per cent in 2010, as well as a 4 per cent internal Indigenous recruitment target.
Structural changes to crime reduction units within ACT policing meant the force scrapped its dedicated Indigenous team in recent years and appointed one Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander liaison officer instead.
The shift would enable more police to gain exposure to the Aboriginal community but it might take the community and support agencies to get used to "a change in the engagement process", ACT policing said in last year's annual report.
Mr Little didn't believe one dedicated officer was adequate.
He said currently there wasn't "a lot of trust" in the ACT's police within the Indigenous community and the level of confidence in police wasn't "as high as it was".
"One thing we're made to talk about with this is that the Aboriginal community and authorities haven't had a positive relationship in the past, so having a different relationship will help do things differently and help build those relationships."
An ACT policing spokesman said the new arrangement meant engagement had "increased significantly" and had resulted in ongoing positive feedback from the Indigenous community.
