A shortage of police officers in Alice Springs is about to get worse with more than a dozen cops applying to Queensland amid the ongoing crime crisis, the NT Independent understands, which sources say will have catastrophic impacts on policing in the troubled town.
The exodus comes as the Federal Government announced $14.2 million in the federal budget to recruit and hire 30 new cops in Alice Springs to help combat the ongoing crime crisis and while the NT Government offered nothing new in its budget for policing numbers.
The same politicians that have watered down bail laws and provided changes to the youth justice act where provisions exist to give preferential treatment based on race that are causing the crime crisis cannot be fixed by more police. All of these changes were based on a premise that youth diversion services would make up for the deficiencies of the legal processes. Plans for a boarding school and other supported accommodation services should have been a priority before the laws changed.