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Speaker 1: Good afternoon. Retailers are asking the Police Minister for an

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Speaker 1: urgent meeting after a revelation that cops are no longer

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Speaker 1: investigating fraud and theft crimes below a certain level. So

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Speaker 1: a memo was sent to police staff two months ago

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Speaker 1: showing police will no longer attend shoplifting incidents where the

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Speaker 1: value is below five hundred dollars, gas theft incidents as

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Speaker 1: in petrol theft incidents of less than one hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty dollars, and won't investigate online scams below one thousand dollars.

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Speaker 1: Superintendent Blair MacDonald is the Police Director of Service, Hay Blair, Kyoder,

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Speaker 1: Why are you guys doing this?

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Speaker 2: Well, look, we're actually not changing anything. Look, unfortunately, there's

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Speaker 2: been some confusion with this memo that went out so effectively,

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Speaker 2: the memo was written specifically for people, in this case

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Speaker 2: my staff, who actually are triarging all of the files

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Speaker 2: that come into the organization. Now, if this information, if

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Speaker 2: I had of intended for that memo to be made

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Speaker 2: public or to be presented in a public way, it

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Speaker 2: would have been worded a very different way.

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Speaker 1: Right, But you're still doing this, right, you are not.

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Speaker 1: You're clearly not going to investigate any shoplifting with the

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Speaker 1: value is below five hundred bucks.

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Speaker 2: Yes, no, no, So that is incorrect. So what I

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Speaker 2: really want to re ensure that reassure all of the

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Speaker 2: listeners out there today that police will absolutely still be

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Speaker 2: investigating shoplifting retail theft where there is clear evidence of offending.

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Speaker 2: So for example, where we have identified an offender, we've

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Speaker 2: got great CCTV footage or vehicles identified, et cetera. What

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Speaker 2: the memo was directing my staff to do was to

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Speaker 2: create a consistent excuse me, threshold for our staff to

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Speaker 2: be able to assign these cases onto the districts.

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Speaker 1: When assessing files with these offenses, you will apply the

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Speaker 1: relevant value threshold and file any file under that threshold

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Speaker 1: regardless of any lines of inquiry, which is to say,

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Speaker 1: regardless of any lines of inquiry, it's not going to

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Speaker 1: be investigated, isn't Isn't that what it's saying.

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Speaker 2: Well, that is true, But what you need to appreciate

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Speaker 2: is that we have groups like the Retail Crime Group

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Speaker 2: who are actually looking across all of these files. Now,

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Speaker 2: certainly I do not disagree that when a file is

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Speaker 2: filed it is what it says on the can. It's filed.

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Speaker 2: But if more evidence comes to light, or we identify

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Speaker 2: a series or a pattern of offending when it comes

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Speaker 2: to read, we can.

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Speaker 1: Reacalivate these guys are filing it. They're filing it regardless

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Speaker 1: of whether there's lines of inquiry. They're putting it away.

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Speaker 1: It's never going to see the light of day again.

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Speaker 1: It's gone.

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Speaker 2: Well, no, that's not true at all. So the filing

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Speaker 2: part is absolutely true. But what you need to appreciate

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Speaker 2: this is going into our national intelligence application, and we

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Speaker 2: have intelligence teams that are looking at these files daily

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Speaker 2: and that's the whole point, right, so they are able

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Speaker 2: to detect these trends and patterns, so we can identify

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Speaker 2: the significant people who are offending in this area.

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Speaker 1: So what you're seeing is patterns and stuff. What if

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Speaker 1: you were running the shop, We're four hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: dollars worth of stuff just got nicked and that got filed.

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Speaker 1: It's it's surely of very little, you know, like assistance

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Speaker 1: to you that somewhere may form a pattern. They want

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Speaker 1: that filed out with right there and not just put away.

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Speaker 1: But it's been put away, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I can completely understand and look, in an

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Speaker 2: ideal world, you know, our organization would be able to

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Speaker 2: investigate every single reported offense that comes in the door.

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Speaker 2: But as I said to you earlier, look, you know

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Speaker 2: my team alone deal with one point twenty five million.

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Speaker 2: Now that is ninety thousand offenses every single month. Now,

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Speaker 2: the reality is we just can't get to that fair enough.

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Speaker 2: And about our assessment process, Yeah, so I'm part of

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Speaker 2: our assessment process, right, we try and judge, Okay, where

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Speaker 2: can we investigate that's going to prevent the most amount

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Speaker 2: of or prevent the most amount of harm and put

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Speaker 2: risk to our members of the public. And this is

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Speaker 2: just one tool in that process.

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Speaker 1: Do you worry though, that now that this information is

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Speaker 1: out there, the recidivists are going to know, right, if

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Speaker 1: they do five dollars and less of shoplifting, they'll get

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Speaker 1: away with it. If they drive away with less than

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty bucks worth of petrol, they'll get

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Speaker 1: away with it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's a fair assumption, right, But again I

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Speaker 2: come back to that's where we're lucky, right, we have

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Speaker 2: good tools, good systems, good processes in place where we've

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Speaker 2: got some very clever people looking for all of that.

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Speaker 2: The Aura platform, for example, captures a fantastic CCTV imagery

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Speaker 2: which allows these investigation teams to connect the dots and

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Speaker 2: so look, you know that's that again. You spoke to

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Speaker 2: Matt earlier last week, his retail crime grip do some

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Speaker 2: fantastic work in that space, and just to give you

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Speaker 2: an example of his numbers, because I know he didn't

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Speaker 2: get to share them, but between twenty two and twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty four, we actually increase the identification of offending in

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Speaker 2: this space by thirty five percent. And how much we

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Speaker 2: went from you, So I don't have that exact data

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Speaker 2: what to do?

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Speaker 1: Focused on the wrong thing. Yeah, I mean, I'm stoked

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Speaker 1: that you guys are doing all this other stuff and

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Speaker 1: you've got cool little systems and stuff. That means nothing

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Speaker 1: to me. I want you to solve the crimes. How

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Speaker 1: many of these crimes are you solving? It'll be pitdly

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Speaker 1: amount day.

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Speaker 2: Look again, sorry, I actually couldn't tell you off there.

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Speaker 2: That's a little bit outside my swim lane. We're busy

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Speaker 2: at the business end managing the information, and then districts

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Speaker 2: of course are out there doing the investigations.

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Speaker 1: All right, Blair, listen, Thank you very much for your

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Speaker 1: time appreciated. It's Superintendent Blair McDonald, Police Director of Service.

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