Police and policing

Giving greater powers to Protection Service Officers is unnecessary, inappropriate and potentially harmful, Liberty Victoria warned today.

The president of the human rights group, Jessie Taylor, added, “This is particularly so where there is little evidence as to the effectiveness of Protection Service Officers (PSOs) in fulfilling their functions and insufficient data to assess whether or not they have any impact at all upon crime rates.”

A reluctance to acknowledge the existence of racial profiling and a misunderstanding of how racism can be part of police practice underscores the need for better education in the Victoria Police, Liberty Victoria said today.

This follows a call by the Law Institute of Victoria for police to be required to have written consent before stopping and searching people deemed to be suspicious.

Both Liberty’s statement and the lawyers’ comments were in submissions to an inquiry after complaints by men with an African background in the Flemington area.