Community to fight police changes
The Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (AVP) will sit at a roundtable with Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland next week.
The roundtable has been initiated by the Ethnic Community Council of Victoria over concerns about Victoria Police鈥檚 Operations Coordination Review.
The Star Observer broke the news last week that Victoria Police鈥檚 Gay & Lesbian Advisory Unit (GLAU) looked set to close in the review after plans were announced to amalgamate numerous specialised units into a new generic community engagement model.
The AVP鈥檚 Greg Adkins said Overland would hear concerns that the Operation Coordination Review may have a negative impact on the soon to be implemented Prejudice and Hate Motivated Crime Strategy.
鈥淭his impact could reduce the effectiveness of strategies designed to increase the reporting of violence which impacts Victoria鈥檚 multi-culture and multi-faith communities and has a major impact through homophobic harassment, prejudice and hate motivated crime into the sexuality and gender diverse communities,鈥� Adkins said.
Adkins said there was also the threat that non-commissioned staff may well fill positions where currently only serving members of Victoria Police provide crucial advisory roles.
鈥淭he experience of non-commissioned staff versus uniformed members in these roles in other states, including Western Australia and NSW, has been that where non-commissioned officers have undertaken these roles, communications and relationships with community rapidly breaks down,鈥� he said.
One possible request from the broad coalition of communities could be that the review be put on hold pending the outcome of the recently announced review into Victoria Police senior management.
The GLBTI community, represented through a reference group, participated in the Operations Coordination Review process but were not listed as participants in the first draft, and there was no evidence that any of the issues or concerns raised by the group were included in the review鈥檚 deliberations.
A 3-part podcast of my interviews with Deputy Victorian Police Commissioner Kieran Walshe and Deputy Secretary of the Victorian Police Association can be found here , with the aid of Greg Adkins of the Anti Violence Project and Sally Goldner of VGLRL. Walshe committed to revisiting the changes is they don’t work out/
The Liberal/National Party are trying get rid of this police Commissioner for daring to march in Pride, and daring to support our community. We are going to lose the expertise to fight hate crimes that effect our community.
When I asked Peter Ryan, the head of the Victorian National Party who is the current Police Minister about GLBTI rights, he wrote, “What you do in your bedroom is your business and that is where it should stay”. He simply has no clue. And all those Liberal members such as the Prahran member, sucked up to us before the election, and when given the chance to show leadership, he drove a knife into our neck supporting the changes the Equal Opportunity Act, that stripped away our protections. He chose to turn back the clock. To take us backwards as a community, to support those that are out to do us great harm in the Liberal Party. He could walk 3 metres accross the floor of parliament, but sat with the haters. He lied to us, he betrayed us, he disgraced himself and let the party be taken over by Christian Fundamentalist. He supported them and not us.
The Liberal/National Party has made war with us, and is trying to turn back the clock and remove 30 years of law reform. The person who is leading the charge against our Civil Rights, including the right to justice, the right to policing, is Robert Clark.
In 1995, the current Liberal Party Christian Fundamentalist Attorney-General said of homosexuality to parliament, 鈥淚 believe homosexual practices form a destructive way of life, destructive to the individual and destructive also to other individuals who are brought into that way of life. I suppose it is most readily demonstrable at a physical level; it is a physical fact that the human body is not designed for many homosexual practices and it is clear that physical problems follow from those practices.鈥� Mr Clark went on to quote a student medical text stating that homosexual male pedophiles commonly reported molesting hundreds of victims, while heterosexual pedophiles 鈥渕olest only a few鈥�. (Read more: ).