Police Technology Upgrades

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA (15:17): My question is for the Minister for Police. Can the minister outline how the state government has, again, demonstrated its commitment to provide our police with the tools of the 21^st century?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (15:17): I thank the Hon. Mr Gazzola for his question around a very important subject. The safety and security of the men and women who work on the front line is something that this government takes incredibly seriously. On Sunday I had the great privilege to join South Australia Police as they began the statewide rollout of body-worn cameras for all front-line police officers, which will see SAPOL as a national leader when it comes to the deployment of this outstanding technology.

The rollout realises the commitment made by the state government in the 2014-15 state budget of $5.9 million to introduce body-worn video technology. The body-worn cameras will enhance officers' security, further increase the public's confidence in the most professional police force in the nation, while also delivering faster, more accurate outcomes for the criminal justice sector. Following a thorough acquisition and trial process, Communications Design & Management Pty Ltd were awarded the tender for the body-worn camera technology.

The contract will see all uniformed police patrols wearing body-worn video as they perform their patrol duties within three years and 1,000 cameras in operation by the 2019-20 financial year. The staged response enables SAPOL to handle the downloading of any recordings. The body-worn cameras are a compact, light and thin camera unit that mounts easily onto the SAPOL uniform. This enables the camera to be visible to the public at all times.

The camera is an extremely versatile wide lens camera, which provides the capture of quality vision and also ensures that it can be used by SAPOL in all conditions across the state, including at night-time. The camera can record audio and visuals, but only records when activated. The activation of the camera is a simple one-touch activation. When activated, two red lights at the base of the camera are illuminated.

The cameras are subject to a secure, encrypted and locked system, with any video recorded only able to be downloaded on the SAPOL system using SAPOL software. SAPOL is confident that the deployment of this technology will result in an increase in transparency, which will only serve to further strengthen public sentiment towards SAPOL through a number of measures, including improving the quality of evidence, resulting in a reduction of not guilty pleas and reduced time and cost for legal and court proceedings.

It will see a reduction in the need for the use of force by police. It will improve safety for police officers and reduce the number of complaints against officers. It will also provide officers with an invaluable opportunity to review and improve their practices on the beat. Members of the public would have already seen officers on the beat using these cameras in Hindley Street, and we will soon see the cameras deployed into the Traffic Support Branch before being rolled out to every front-line officer in the state.

The rollout of body-worn cameras is the latest in this state government's desire to pursue and ensure our police force is a 21^stcentury police force and one of the most advanced in the nation and, indeed, the world. These cameras come on top of recent announcements, such as the mobile rugged tablets and also facial recognition technology that is used by SAPOL.

This government is committed to providing our police force with all the tools they need to reduce the time officers spend behind desks and increase the agility and responsiveness of police operations. This government, along with SAPOL, has a proven track record over the past 15 years of keeping South Australians safe, with a 30.5 per cent reduction in crime. With extra officers and a police force equipped with the tools of the 21^st century, I am confident community safety in South Australia is in good hands.

It is really important to contemplate this technology in the context of everything else this government is doing in and around policing. I mentioned the substantial reduction we have seen in crime in South Australia. This isn't something we can take for granted, and it is certainly not something that has just happened. We have seen other jurisdictions that haven't experienced the same reductions in crime that South Australia has had. It is worth contemplating what has contributed to this in order to work out how we are going to ensure it continues into the future.

The first element is making sure that we have a well-resourced police force in the context of the most valuable resource that any police force can have, and that is, of course, sworn officers. This government has been committed, over a sustained period, to increasing the size of the police force. That commitment has resulted in this state having more police per capita than any other state in the nation. That is an extraordinary statistic. We are number one in the nation when it comes to the number of police per capita. I am not sure that is a statistic that other police ministers prior to me can espouse, including one in this chamber, but it is a statement of fact that we have more police officers in this state per capita than in any other state in the country.

However, we are not resting on our laurels in that respect. We are continuing to invest in more police officers coming in to this state's service, which is why by mid next year we will have honoured, in full, our commitment to increase the police force by in excess of another 300 sworn police officers. Once they are within the employ of SAPOL, that will give the police commissioner an additional degree of flexibility in deploying resources into front-line areas that need it most.

The nature of crime is changing. The same crimes that were committed in previous decades are not the same crimes being committed now. We have seen an extraordinary increase in the workload of our men and women in uniform in the area of domestic violence, amongst others, so it is important that we continue to improve SAPOL's level of resourcing when it comes to personnel.

But we can't just provide the police commissioner with extra sworn police officers, we also have to ensure that we are providing him with outstanding technology. And this government has delivered in spades. We have just announced the body-worn video, but that is on the back of other things as well—things like facial recognition technology, a technology that is now being utilised by SAPOL in an extraordinary way. I have no doubt that this technology will continue to improve and result in offenders that we don't want on our streets instead being put before the courts to be held to account.

Another example is the mobile rugged tablets, which have already been rolled out in some patrol cars throughout the state. What this will do is give police officers the capacity to do functions out on the beat that would otherwise have to be done behind a desk. We want to support the police commissioner in the effort to take police out from behind the desk and instead put them out on the front line where they can fight crime where it is happening.

I note that this is a policy that doesn't seem to be shared by the opposition. It is becoming increasingly clear that the opposition is taking a policy to the next state election where they will be taking over operational police functions and taking that responsibility away from the police commissioner. This is something that I think all South Australians should be particularly alarmed about—having an opposition that wants to intervene in the police commissioner's job and telling him where and when he will have resources allocated, including human resources.

We don't agree with that policy position of the opposition. We will go to the next election backing our police commissioner to utilise the extraordinary resources that we have bestowed upon SAPOL in a way that best addresses fighting crime.