Domestic violence inquiry has exposed toxic culture in Queensland police force

 

For all the tea in China, I wouldn’t be a cop. Dealing with the dregs of society, going to work each day with the possibility of being killed, working shifts that affect sleep patterns … the list of drawbacks is endless.

But there’s a darker, more sinister side to being a police officer in Queensland – especially if you’re a woman.

The revelations emerging from a police inquiry into the service’s responses to domestic violence have exposed a deeper malaise.

This is a cohort of people who have lost their way. They’ve lost their identity. They are a police service lacking leadership, where the modern realisations of a safe workplace are colliding with the seedy traditions of yesteryear.

Reading the evidence is like watching an episode of Mad Men, where the misogynistic ways of men in the 1960s are laid bare. Women are merely seen as sex objects.

The Queensland police service is facing a cultural tsunami and the so-called Old Guard are being decapitated, one by one.

The question that the good folk of Queensland need to be asking today is – if certain male police officers treat their female counterparts in this oafish and belligerent way, what hope does the citizen in the street have against such poor behaviour?

If a cop has no regard for his colleagues, how does he handle law-abiding citizens?

When Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll took over the top job three years ago, she knew there would be difficult days.

Yet this inquiry is a long-running horror movie. The Commission of Inquiry has unearthed our worst fears. It has revealed a police service that has not kept pace with the morals and ethics required of a 21st century organisation.

The toxic culture and lack of manners among some of the mostly male officers is embarrassing, and deeply divisive.

It does nothing to instil confidence and it hurts those who treat the job seriously, and who behave responsibly. It seems for every good cop, there’s a bad cop.

Ms Carroll is dealing with a culture among the men towards female officers that has flourished and been entrenched for decades.

The cover-ups and lack of transparency and accountability are a damning indictment on a police service that has lost touch with reality.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/peter-gleeson/peter-gleeson-domestic-violence-inquiry-has-exposed-toxic-culture-in-queensland-police-force/news-story/5d54c548bcab6a1b96176e1190d791cf