So how are Police in WA going with their industrial claim, fair to piddling at a guess. They were promised a 1.5% pay rise, a 38 hour week and more staff to relieve some of the pressure.
What have they got out of those promised things?
They got a much smaller offer of an extra $1000 per year, no change to the hours and yet to learn if they get the extra staff they were promised.
There was the industrial action where the Union advised the police to go to Tier 3 which was don't respond to any call that wasn't likely to result in physical harm to the public. This action was halted less than 3 hours in due to the Commissioner's intervention by citing the relevant section of legislation that showed it was not allowed. As it happened the industrial action appears to not lasted long enough to have affected anyone, nor even come into affect.
Should if have come to that? No it definitely shouldn't have. Its an action their union would have deliberated over heavily and its possible many staff may have chosen to ignore it had it gone on longer anyway. Should the union have gone that path? Most say no & perhaps they shouldn't have but again the Government should never have reneged or broken the agreement that everyone thought was in place and thought would be honoured.
Now its back to a circling pattern to see the next outcome.
Added to that now the Police Union wants officers to have access to AR-15s in the case of a siege or terrorism attack due to the length of delay deploying Tactical Response type officers. Its a pretty valid point and actually its darn easy to fix.
How?
Fit a gunsafe into the boot of patrol cars to house a patrol rifle (such as AR-15) ammunition and magazines. A rifle then only has to be signed out, signed back in at the shift change...easy. Bit of extra training at a regular intervals. Done.
But what is an AR-15? It's an Assault Rifle yeah?
Well no, there really is no such thing as an "assault rifle" in fact the "AR" stands for "Armalite Rifle"
An AR-15 fires a 556 or .223 (nearly identical) bullet. Its actually a very common hunting calibre.
They'll most likely use a hunting bullet, not a military bullet. What's the main difference?
The projectile. In military they generally use a completely solid one piece projectile or "Full Metal Jacket" so that its more likely to wound than to kill. The military thinking is that in a battle if you kill one member of the enemy you only take one person out of the battle. If you badly wound one, you can take 2, 3 or even 4 people out of the fight.
Police scenario is probably a lot different. If they shoot its probably to stop the bad person & not other people. A FMJ projectile has the very high likelihood of passing through the target and possibly through one or two other people depending how close the shot is and how many people are around. Police are more likely to use a hunting round as more energy hits the target with a hunting round because the projectile expands on impact. No it doesn't explode, it expands and less likely to come out the other side.
AR-15s are in fact an older military design, a fair few companies make them now and they're relatively reliable and generally fairly accurate. They're a semi automatic with a detachable magazine.
Now semi automatic is not a machine gun, all it means is you pull the trigger it goes bang once & once only, it reloads the next round in the chamber and waits til you pull the trigger again.
Its actually not a scare thing at all. I think Police in country areas have a "patrol rifle" and its a AR-15 of some sort. I gather it has an Eotech tech holographic sight which are pretty good but they're battery operated. This means (I hope) they're also fitted with flip up iron sights if the battery goes dead.
It doesn't send out a red dot onto the target like the movies, it is a red dot projected only onto a miniscule glass screen atop the rifle. No battery means you don't know where sight zero is. Also they're designed for fast target acquisition at fairly close distances. If they're still fitted with Eotech sights I just hope they're also fitted with a flip over magnifier otherwise their 200-300 metre rifle is only good for 30-80 metres with that sight.
I hope they get a good armourer to sort out the rifle scope disaster.
I hope to the Armourer puts it out there that while the Police should have flashlights for their work they should also have a flashlight fitted to their Glock pistols. If its night or inside a dark house and they need to have their pistol drawn ready then they really need both hands on the pistol or one hand on the pistol and the other turning a door knob or whatever, not having a gun in one hand and torch in the other & fumbling.
If their pistols don't have flashlights we are letting them down terribly. VERY BADLY, they're a risk.
We really need to rally behind all our first responders including fire brigades, ambos & police. With the Labor Party of no help & the Liberal Party no where to be seen I have to commend the NationalsWA for attending the Police rally some time back and addressing the crowd. They haven't harped on it to gain votes, just plugged away behind the scenes trying to get a fair outcome.
Win or fail time will tell but least its not the WA Police all on their own.
But wait there's more. WA Police should have full & proper Worker's Compensation.
That's right they currently don't.
They should have the full FAMILY medical, dental & ancillaries health insurance premium paid for them by us. They should never have to worry about their health nor their family's health either and it should extend to any required psychological health professionals that might be required also.
And on top of that, they should have their Paraplegic Benefit Fund family membership premium paid for them too.
And did you know Police who are renting copped a big rent fee rise too? Yeah its like they're enemies of the state when really getting into the police force & the teaching profession should be the highest paid careers with the best benefits. High rewards & being very hard to get in means we're more likely to have the best professionals in protection & future proofing there is.
I think we also should (using the hashtag) #ProtectThoseWhoProtectUs
Its not hard, its quite easy, its fair and its basic decency.
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