❓ Question regarding the effectiveness of the Frontline 2020 reform's mobile phone initiative for local policing teams. The Minister provides an update, including audit results and future plans for improvement.
AnsweredQoN 373Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
POLICE — FRONTLINE 2020
373. MR N.W. MORTON to the Minister for
Police:
Before I ask my question, can I just
acknowledge the principal and students from Heathridge Primary School in the
member for Joondalup's electorate who are in the Speaker's
gallery.
Can the minister please provide an
update on the effectiveness of the Frontline 2020 reform local policing teams'
mobile phone initiative?
373. MR N.W. MORTON to the Minister for
Police:
Before I ask my question, can I just
acknowledge the principal and students from Heathridge Primary School in the
member for Joondalup's electorate who are in the Speaker's
gallery.
Can the minister please provide an
update on the effectiveness of the Frontline 2020 reform local policing teams'
mobile phone initiative?
AnswerView source ↗
I thank the member for Forrestfield for this question and for
his continued interest in policing in his area, and particularly that
engagement he has taken up personally with his local policing teams.
Frontline 2020 is our new policing
model, and the government and WA Police have been working very effectively
together to implement this new model of policing in Western Australia,
starting, of course, as we know, in the Perth metropolitan area. We are now
rolling out our Frontline 2020 program into regional Western Australia. Part of
the new program was to have local policing teams engage more effectively with
members of the community. To help facilitate that, we encouraged local policing
teams to engage with Facebook and Twitter, and to also advertise their mobile
phone numbers. Each of the local policing teams has its own specific mobile
phone number that is linked to particular suburbs, so that members of those
communities can contact the local policing teams and feed local issues directly
to the team responsible for solving them. In response to some issues raised in
this house by the member for Mandurah, in fact, who said that these calls were
going unanswered and that there was a pending catastrophe with the lack of
response from these local policing teams and calls from the community that were
not being attended to, we commissioned an audit between 13 and 19 April on our
local policing teams. The audit was to have a look at the number of calls
received, the volume of calls, the number of calls answered, the number of
messages left for calls that were not answered, the time taken to contact the
caller after a message was left, and also the suitability of those calls. That
was to ensure that people are contacting these local policing teams for matters
that are of a local nature and not for other matters. The results of that audit
were very interesting. We had 472 calls to our 148 local policing teams over
that week from members of the community. Of those calls, 25 per cent that were
answered and responded to were not in fact appropriate calls, so we know that
we need our local policing teams to engage more proactively with the community
and we need to do a little more marketing and a bit more education and push out
the information as to which of the calls the local policing teams can
appropriately respond to. The really interesting statistic, though, that I am
very pleased with—it shows our model is working—is that of the
calls not immediately answered, 95 per cent were responded to within 24 hours.
When a message was left with the local police around a matter, 95 per cent of
those calls when callers had left a message were responded to within 24 hours,
and around half of those calls were responded to within two hours. We think
that is a success story. We are really pleased with the results of that audit.
Mr
D.A. Templeman interjected.
The
SPEAKER : Member for Mandurah!
Mrs
L.M. HARVEY : We have learned from this that we do need to market the local
policing team mobile phone initiative more effectively—probably through
Facebook and Twitter—and push that message out. We will maintain an
ongoing six-monthly audit of the success of this trial, making sure that we can
keep the agency informed and local community informed of this opportunity to
connect more effectively with their local policing teams. We will also embark
on a mystery shopper program with local policing teams, by which we will have
people randomly call the local policing team mobile phone numbers and assess
the quality of the response they get from that mobile phone number and the
effectiveness of the local policing team. I thank the member for Mandurah for
raising that issue. The results of that audit were very informative, and the
ongoing audit of this program will continue to improve and perfect the model
that we are so proud of and that the community has embraced so warmly in
Western Australia.
his continued interest in policing in his area, and particularly that
engagement he has taken up personally with his local policing teams.
Frontline 2020 is our new policing
model, and the government and WA Police have been working very effectively
together to implement this new model of policing in Western Australia,
starting, of course, as we know, in the Perth metropolitan area. We are now
rolling out our Frontline 2020 program into regional Western Australia. Part of
the new program was to have local policing teams engage more effectively with
members of the community. To help facilitate that, we encouraged local policing
teams to engage with Facebook and Twitter, and to also advertise their mobile
phone numbers. Each of the local policing teams has its own specific mobile
phone number that is linked to particular suburbs, so that members of those
communities can contact the local policing teams and feed local issues directly
to the team responsible for solving them. In response to some issues raised in
this house by the member for Mandurah, in fact, who said that these calls were
going unanswered and that there was a pending catastrophe with the lack of
response from these local policing teams and calls from the community that were
not being attended to, we commissioned an audit between 13 and 19 April on our
local policing teams. The audit was to have a look at the number of calls
received, the volume of calls, the number of calls answered, the number of
messages left for calls that were not answered, the time taken to contact the
caller after a message was left, and also the suitability of those calls. That
was to ensure that people are contacting these local policing teams for matters
that are of a local nature and not for other matters. The results of that audit
were very interesting. We had 472 calls to our 148 local policing teams over
that week from members of the community. Of those calls, 25 per cent that were
answered and responded to were not in fact appropriate calls, so we know that
we need our local policing teams to engage more proactively with the community
and we need to do a little more marketing and a bit more education and push out
the information as to which of the calls the local policing teams can
appropriately respond to. The really interesting statistic, though, that I am
very pleased with—it shows our model is working—is that of the
calls not immediately answered, 95 per cent were responded to within 24 hours.
When a message was left with the local police around a matter, 95 per cent of
those calls when callers had left a message were responded to within 24 hours,
and around half of those calls were responded to within two hours. We think
that is a success story. We are really pleased with the results of that audit.
Mr
D.A. Templeman interjected.
The
SPEAKER : Member for Mandurah!
Mrs
L.M. HARVEY : We have learned from this that we do need to market the local
policing team mobile phone initiative more effectively—probably through
Facebook and Twitter—and push that message out. We will maintain an
ongoing six-monthly audit of the success of this trial, making sure that we can
keep the agency informed and local community informed of this opportunity to
connect more effectively with their local policing teams. We will also embark
on a mystery shopper program with local policing teams, by which we will have
people randomly call the local policing team mobile phone numbers and assess
the quality of the response they get from that mobile phone number and the
effectiveness of the local policing team. I thank the member for Mandurah for
raising that issue. The results of that audit were very informative, and the
ongoing audit of this program will continue to improve and perfect the model
that we are so proud of and that the community has embraced so warmly in
Western Australia.
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