From the Commissioner’s Desk

This week I started my new role as the 19^th Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service, and I thought it was only appropriate that I use this opportunity to launch From the Commissioner’s Desk, my new blog.

I look forward to using this blog to talk about issues of significance to me personally, to the Queensland Police Service, and to the people of Queensland.

Even more importantly, I would like you to use this blog to let me know what matters to you, and provide me with feedback on my performance, the performance of the Queensland Police Service and how we can work together with you to make Queensland an even better place to live.

I take on my new role with three main priorities, with the first and most important being to stop crime.

This may be an aspirational goal, however I truly believe that working together, we can, as a society, make real and important reductions in crime rates. But we can only do it by building relationships between our police service and the community we serve. This is another priority for me as Commissioner.

 Together, we can make Queensland safer. This is my third priority.

Peel’s Principles of Policing, written in 1829, are seen as the basis of policing theory in modern democratic society, and they are worth revisiting here:

Principle 1: The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

Principle 2: The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.

Principle 3: Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

Principle 4: The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

Principle 5: Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

Principle 6: Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.

Principle 7: Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Principle 8: Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

Principle 9: The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

Every one of these principles are as relevant in a digital age as they were when they were written.

I am in the fortunate position of being the first Queensland Commissioner of Police, and, I believe, the first Commissioner in Australia, to be able to take advantage of the power of social media to build upon those principles, and you may be aware that I have been tweeting for some years under the account @DeputyStewart. That account has now been renamed @CoPStewart.

I welcome you to follow me on Twitter, and favourite this blog to get an insight into the day-to-day realities of being the Commissioner to a modern, professional police service of more than 10,500 sworn officers providing for the safety and security of more than three million Queenslanders spread across more than 1.72 million square kilometres. I look forward to working with you to make this wonderful State an even safer place to live, work and do business.

This article from the Commissioners Desk - November 2, 2012 at 11:02 am