No knee jerk reactions here

No knee jerk reactions in NSW government or the police force, are there? First, everyone is praising the police invesigation into the Cronulla racist violence and the Lebanese reprisal attacks that followed. Then a bit of criticism about them going soft on Lebanese gang violence and criminal activity, and hey presto, all of a sudden we have a permanent task force to deal with the problem, which has been a festering issue for several years. Plus, the task force investigating the Cronulla violence and its aftermath suddenly gets extra police – up from 28 to 100. No doubt this will be achieved by taking them off some other duties, involving crimes that are not currently political hot potatoes.

Then we have a furore about a video of a man being bashed by several “men of middle eastern appearance” (sick of hearing this – we all know it means Lebanese, why not just be open about it?). The premier, Morris Iemma, is angry and embarassed at being ambushed over this apparent lack of police action. So next police commissioner Ken Moroney removes the head of the police task force, Supt Dennis Bray, from his command, for failing to tell him about the existence of the video.

The next twist is the police on Bray’s squad complaining about his removal, and demanding his reinstatement. This happened today, although as 2IC with a new taskforce commander over him. And of course, with this latest stink, Morris Iemma denies any involvement in the decision to remove Bray from his command.

Interesting perspective on all of this bumbling here. I especially like this:

“Moroney would do well to spend more time running the police than appearing at press conferences with Iemma.” (For Canberra people, I’d say the same about a certain uniformed ACT public servant and Jon Stanhope – clue.)

Maybe if the government and police commissioner were more concerned with policing for the whole community, and not concerned so much about pandering to vested interests or worrying what was being said about them in the media, they’d do a much better job. Just think, all the resources dedicated to media monitoring, might get spent on something much more useful, like policing crime.