Page 5135 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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resolve incidents without force. The conflict de-escalation model is not a linear approach to options of severity of force. Instead it is a flexible model that relies upon a police officer constantly communicating, assessing and reassessing the situation directly related to the level of threat offered and the appropriate force required to counter that threat.
Each and every time a police officer in the ACT resorts to force they must file a report. That report is reviewed at multiple levels within the AFP and is subject to review by the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The AFP regularly reviews its training and governance to ensure currency and incorporation of any lessons learned. Every police officer must undergo annual recertification in their full use-of-force options, guidelines and principles. This includes firearms, batons, OC spray and physical restraint techniques as well as verbal negotiation, practical scenarios and medical assessment. It also includes, of course, tasers.
Over the last two years, ACT Policing have had cause to discharge their tasers only twice. More tellingly, they record having drawn a taser only 11 times in that same period. When one considers the number of incidents of violence police attend in the course of a single year, the fact that they have discharged the taser device only twice in two years stands as strong testimony to the professional and conservative approach adopted by the territory’s police service in using force to resolve such incidents.
I will make an observation, if I may, about the incident Mr Rattenbury referred to in Western Australia. That is, on the face of it, an appalling incident, one that is an abuse of police authority and position and one that involves what is clearly abuse when it comes to the use of force. It is not condoned in any way by the government. But the observation I would make about that incident is that it did not occur here in the ACT. It occurred in another jurisdiction. When we look at the use of tasers in the ACT, we should have regard to the particular circumstances of the ACT and the record of our police in their use of those devices here in the territory rather than draw some sensational links to incidents in other places.
I would also make the observation that abuse of use of force is abuse of use of force. It is not related to a particular technological device. It can occur with a baton. It can occur with OC spray. It can occur with other forms of use of force. It is not driven by a particular device; it is not technologically determined. It is driven by the culture, the training and the capacity of police in how they deal with incidents involving violence.
We have seen abuses of use of force in other circumstances in the ACT. Most notably, we have seen it in relation to the ACT watch-house where about four years ago an officer in charge of the watch-house abused use of force when it came to the use of OC spray—capsicum foam spray. That was an abuse of use of force, and that officer faced discipline as a result of those actions.
So I think it is very important that, when we have this debate about tasers, we reflect not on the particular device but on the context in which police exercise use of force, the guidelines and the training they receive and the orders they have to comply with. When we look at it in that context, we can see very clearly that we have a strong and robust framework that detects abuses when they occur—fortunately they do not occur
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