POLICE — CROWD
DISPERSAL EQUIPMENT
1551. Hon MARTIN ALDRIDGE to the minister representing the
Minister for Police:
I submitted two questions today to
the Minister for Police. Four hours after they were lodged, I was advised that
the Minister for Police was unavailable due to her travelling, which we were
not notified of prior to the 11.00 am cut-off. If it is not too much trouble, I
will ask the Minister for Police a question from yesterday.
I refer to the issuance of crowd
dispersal equipment in regional WA.
(1) Which regions
have local caches of crowd dispersal equipment available for immediate
deployment?
(2) Which regions
have sufficiently trained officers available for immediate deployment utilising
the equipment identified in (1)?
(3) How does the Western
Australia Police Force determine and prioritise the deployment of such
equipment across regional WA?
(4) Will the
minister commit to each police region having sufficient crowd dispersal
equipment to mitigate identified risks?
Hon
STEPHEN DAWSON replied:
I thank the honourable member for
some notice of the question. The following answer has been provided to me by
the Minister for Police. The Western Australia Police Force advises the
following.
(1) All districts in regional WA
have crowd dispersal equipment for immediate deployment.
(2) All
officers receive public order training at recruit level. There is also a cohort
of officers who form a district support team in each regional WA district. The
officers in the DST have received higher levels of training facilitated by the
regional operations group, which continues to deliver this specialist training
when required.
(3) Regional WA determines and prioritise the deployment of
such equipment.
(4) See the response to (1).