Dubbo is expected to be home to one of the new Regional Enforcement Squads (RES) brought in by new police commissioner Mick Fuller and his regional deputy Gary Worboys.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Speaking to the Daily Liberal just days out from starting in his new posting, Mr Worboys said recent changes to the structure at the top end of policing in NSW signal a new era in law enforcement across the state.
As one of two deputy commissioners appointed by Mr Fuller (Jeff Loy is deputy for city), Mr Worboys said the implementation of a strike force to look at the re-engineering of resourcing will kick off on Monday.
“We won’t be doing anything outrageous, rather just finetuning things and making sure we have resources where they are needed,” Mr Worboys said.
“Across regional NSW we have nearly 5000 police, and what we’re looking to do is have the ability to move some of them as the need arises and disrupt crime cycles.
“We will look at having one RES in the southern, western and northern regions of NSW, and they will have the capability to be moved around.
“As an example if the RES is based out of Dubbo and there’s a spike in break-and-enters in Bathurst, those officers can be deployed down there to tackle that problem and let the general duties officers in Bathurst go about their usual job.
“The taskforce starts Monday, and we would like to have this up and running by Christmas so there’s a lot of work to be done, particularly around numbers but we’ll be speaking to regional commanders to work out the issues of where to base the squads and how many officers will make them up.”
Another area Mr Worboys is keen to address is the dealing of methamphetamine (ice) in regional NSW.
And while he admits it is a difficult subject to find the answer to, police won’t stop their pursuit of those involved in the industry.
“Our task will be to collect accurate information and setting about targeting hose mid-level suppliers,” he said.
“They prey on vulnerable people in our communities, usually young people.
“So the message we want to get out there is if you have dealers in your town, we will put operations in place to try and see those dealers go to jail.
“It’s not easy and I never pretend we will solve it, but we’ll be going hard at the people selling these illicit drugs across regional NSW.”
