It’s a fair cop: Aussies tempt boys in blue Down Under
The world’s biggest policing jurisdiction - larger than Western Europe - is running out of recruits and has begun a campaign to entice gardaí to take to a new beat Down Under.
Western Australia Police (WAPOL) Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan will be in Dublin the week after next running information seminars for the keen or merely curious.
He is also taking his campaign to Britain and interviews with applicants from both countries will take place in London early next year.
Some 1,400 vacancies need to be filled in WAPOL over the next four years due to retirements, resignations and an election pledge by the new state government to increase the size of the 5,000-strong force by an additional 350 members.
Ideally, applicants will have 3-5 years’ experience in the force but there will be room for some long-servers and specialists and a generous general age limit of 45 applies.
Ireland is an attractive prospect for WAPOL because there are no language barriers and the criminal justice systems are similar, but recruits who go west could find life very different.
Crime rates in Western Australia are the lowest in the country and murders, gangland violence and drug trafficking are as scarce as traffic jams in the vast state which has a population of just two million.
“We’re not quite so, um, sophisticated as Ireland in that respect,” said Ken See, general manager of the Western Australia Police Union (WAPOLUN). But he added that the quieter life can have drawbacks. “The nature of the work is different. The isolation in the remote areas is something recruits need to think about.”
Mr O’Callaghan is confident the chance for change will prove a draw for Irish recruits and he hasn’t been put off by recent garda scandals or the Morris Tribunal.
Regarded as a reformer, he took up his post a year ago after a critical Royal Commission [statutory inquiry] into policing standards and has since sacked or forced to resign 24 officers in a crackdown on corruption.
