Former ACT police chief Neil Gaughan's biggest win in the role was in motivating the Barr-Rattenbury government to finally invest in recruiting additional officers.
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It wasn't easy. The government failed to match police numbers to population growth for years, leaving Canberra with one of the lowest policing ratios in the country.
Deputy Commissioner Gaughan went public with his concerns last January, warning that officers were experiencing health and welfare stress issues as a result of the pressures caused by low police numbers.
He also noted that there had been a direct impact on the quality of service being provided with priority one and two target response times to serious incidents blowing out.
"We need to do something; it has become a much more complex [policing environment], more suicides, more domestic violence [and] more mental health [issues]," he said at the time.
That would have come as no surprise to residents who were learning of such incidents on a daily basis through the media. Canberra is no longer the big country town of yore. It is a major city and police here have to deal with many of the same issues, including outlaw bikie gangs and drug related violence, as major cities everywhere.
You can't do that without boots on the ground. That was confirmed by an independent consultant's report commissioned by the AFP in the wake of Deputy Commissioner Gaughan's remarks.
The government was left with no choice but to act and committed $107 million for 126 additional police over a five year period. The shortage of officers is exacerbated by the fact that while ACT Policing only loses 3.7 per cent of its strength to "natural attrition" each year about 12 per cent transfer to the national side of the AFP. It's hard to cope with the loss of up to 15 per cent of your skilled workforce in any given year.
An inevitable consequence of recruiting additional police, and one that Deputy Commissioner Gaughan recently drew attention to, is that a lot of the officers on the beat have only been a part of the thin blue line for a very short time.
"Our general duties police officers, those most likely to provide the immediate response to crime, are the most inexperienced in the country," he told a conference shortly before stepping down.
"At our police stations - Gungahlin, Belconnen, City, Woden and Tuggeranong - over 48 per cent of our uniformed police are probationary constables."
He noted that up to 100 new police would be joining ACT Policing in each of the next two financial years and said that inexperience was already contributing too "non-optimal outcomes" with matters being dismissed at court and costs being awarded against police at "an all time high".
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While this is a significant concern the reality is that ACT Policing is caught in a classic catch-22 situation.
If you recruit new police to fill a gap left by a combination of departures and a failure by government to have resourced the force appropriately they will obviously lack experience in a very challenging and complex role. The only way they can get experience is on the job.
Nobody would doubt that the young officers, and their superiors, are doing the best they can. And it is hoped, in time, this situation will resolve itself.
That said, it might be timely to review the training provided at the academy and the mentoring processes in place once officers are deployed.
If, as is almost certainly the case, additional resources would smooth the path for the new recruits the government should provide them.
