PEOPLE power has had a major win in the fight to secure a police dog with a dual capability dog unit position permanently headed for Tamworth.
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Western Region Assistant Commissioner Geoff McKechnie announced the full time position with local police and Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson yesterday as
Senior Constable Kaine Schwartz and his drug detection and general duties dog hit the ground for three months in Tamworth.
The surprise announcement came just days after senior police confirmed the three month deployment was a trial to prove a permanent position was warranted.
But for anti-crime campaigner Renee Bourne, it’s a clear win for the people after she gathered thousands of signatures and stories from victims of crime.
“It’s been a long road but to see this outcome is brilliant, I’m so excited,” she told The Leader.
“It’s definitely people power because it was just a comment when the robbery occurred at our store that police said they didn’t have enough resources, they didn’t feel like they could get to everything in town and also with all the drugs in town.“
Now the difficult part will be finding someone to take up the Tamworth posting full-time with a general duties dog as well as a drug detection canine.
“During the three month period we are going through a recruitment process to permanently recruit a dog unit operator to be based here at Tamworth Police
Station so it’s a fantastic out-come,” Assistant Commissioner McKechnie said.
Assistant Commissioner Mc-Kechnie said the permanent role had only been decided and the additional trial ensured a dog unit “in the interim.”
“What we’re hoping is that by the time this three month trial is over that we have a person selected’ trained or in training ready to go,” he said.
“We’ve got a couple of people indicating that they want to give it a try.”
Oxley police have already mapped out a plan of policing operations to stop drug dealers and offenders in their tracks and officers are hoping the mere presence of the dog will ensure the community feels protected.
“The dog unit will assist us in a lot of preventative crime as well as the detections it does get, and preventative crime is very difficult to measure,” crime manager Inspector Phil O’Reilly said.
“He will be working closely with Oxley Target Action Group, the proactive team who have from recent reports you’ve seen been very effective in driving down crime.”
Senior Constable Schwartz will be deployed throughout Oxley until April but there could be a gap before the permanent replacement is made.
“It doesn’t matter whether you live in Sydney or Tamworth, crime is committed everywhere and we should not be disadvantaged by having less resources than they do in Sydney,” Mr Anderson said.
“It is something this community has been pushing for a very long time – to get a unit with two dogs and a handler that is dedicated to the Oxley local area command
to ultimately provide the resources they need to do the joband obviously get on top of crime and be proactive in policing.”
and I think this will go a long way to helping them achieve that.”