Old-fashioned ways of providing a law-keeping presence across Canberra's far-flung and growing suburbs could be revived as police begin to develop plans for their future stations.
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Canberra's Chief Police Officer Ray Johnson believes that a "mixed model" may best suit the city's future urban environment as suburbs such as Ginninderry stretch police resources to the west of the ACT, and small, shared facilities like Gungahlin Police Station struggle to cope with the exploding population growth in the north.
ACT government funding has been provided to allow police to begin planning their future accommodation needs and CPO Johnson says there is "merit in talking about smaller, local stations for Canberra".
Police are unlike other emergency services, he said, because the station often acts a focus for community engagement and interaction. A police station provides a level of comfort and reassurance through "a fixed presence" in an area.
The multi-million dollar question is whether a sizeable, expensive building with all the traditional station features makes sense for the long term.
The newest police station in Canberra is Belconnen, and cost $23 million seven years ago.
To build an equivalent now, CPO Johnson says, would cost the best part of $30 million.
Around 2009, ACT police were torn between investing in a new stand-alone station for Gungahlin to replace the current facility shared with ambulance and firefighters, or to put the money into a new station at Belconnen.
Belconnen became the imperative when the old Lathlain Street station, which shared its walls with the former Belconnen Remand Centre, became an occupational health and safety risk.
Under former ACT Chief Police Officer Mike Phelan, now the head of the Australia's Criminal Intelligence Commission, there was a concerted push toward installing more technology into patrol cars to allow them to operate as mobile offices in the belief that Canberra was compact enough to get from one end to the other fairly quickly.
The theory went that doing more paperwork "out on the road" increased police visibility, allowed for more mobility, and helped in reducing response times.
However, the tablet-style in-car technology of 2009 wasn't always reliable and unsuited to filing lengthy reports. Officers found it easier and quicker to return to a desktop computer at the station.
While the Australian Federal Police's latest "futures project" is revisiting the latest mobile technology and giving officers on patrol more sophisticated hand-held devices, some older, proven ideas are back on the table.
"Mike [Phelan] was right; technology certainly helps," CPO Johnson said.
"We are moving toward that as much as we can and let police officers do their work without coming back to the station.
"Police vehicles can be anywhere in the district and you can be in Belconnen and closer to Gungahlin that you would if you were [patrolling] in Gungahlin.
"I know the community, whether they go there [to their local station] or not, draw a sense of comfort from a police presence in their area. People like the comfort of knowing there is a police station nearby.
"I think those things will be taken into account for the future; I think there are things we have to consider from the shopfront style [of police centre]."
He believed there was merit in talking about smaller police stations; somewhere in which police can safely store their equipment, take proper rest breaks and conduct secure interviews but which didn't necessarily soak up a huge chunk of the police budget.
What that smaller station model looks like, I'm not sure. But the discussion is certainly one to have.
- ACT Chief Police Officer Mike Phelan
"What that smaller station model looks like, I'm not sure. But the discussion is certainly one to have," he said.
During the 1980s, Canberra had "shopfront" police stations in Civic, Belconnen and Tuggeranong.
The first was custom-built for the police and opened in the centre of Garema Place, just down from the current bus interchange. It was such a success, a second was opened a year later inside Belconnen's Westfield Mall.
In the police magazine Platypus of 1989 Superintendent Mal McGregor said the Civic shopfront "presents our officers with a concept of policing different to the normal general duties work," he said.
"Walking the beat allows police to interact with other people more frequently than when patrolling in a car.
"Interaction with the public will always be the 'bread-and-butter' of community policing."