That’s not what community policing was about, the NSW Deputy Police Commissioner told a recent Goulburn Chamber of Commerce meeting.

“I think the art of community policing has moved away a bit in the past five to 10 years and we need to get it back. But we’re starting to do that,” Mr Worboys said.

The Deputy Commissioner Regional NSW Field Operations was invited to speak about the newly created Police Districts and their impact on policing. Mr Worboys, who joined the Force in 1983, has extensive country experience, with appointments at Lightning Ridge, Lismore, Goulburn and Monaro, the latter two as Local Area Commander.

He was appointed to his current role in May, 2017. Mr Worboys still lives in Goulburn and takes a strong interest in the community.

He said the new Police Districts, replacing the 20-year-old Local Area Commands, had injected far greater flexibility and removed borders of responsibility.

“The (former) Commands went about their work but there was not a lot of connection between them in the end,” Mr Worboys told the meeting.

“...The areas are all very different across the State and the further out the more rural they become. Further out, there are very isolated, remote and at times dysfunctional communities that need all the help they can get and they need to be treated differently because they’re so far removed from the city.”

The new Districts have an officer in charge model where each village, town or city knows who that officer is and has access to them. Mr Worboys said this was necessary to allow resources like high risk domestic violence teams and rural crime prevention officers to be deployed where needed. Overlaying this are regional enforcement squads, targeting drugs, mid level crime and organised criminal groups.

In the Hume Police District, rural crime prevention officer Mick Calleja is based in Goulburn but works across the southern region. He not only investigates but proactively targets rural crime and “habitual offenders” with the help of an analyst and other investigators in his unit.

“A stronger network of investigators, information collection and analysis that allows us to know who is stealing equipment from a shearing shed this week, last week and stop them from doing it next week,” Mr Worboys said.

“We need to collect information around rural crime and put together a plan to disrupt and expose the next generation of thieves in country towns.”

To this end, every bit of information from the community was vital. But the community needed to feel comfortable reporting matters, making relationships with police all the more important, he said.

Region Enforcement squads had reaped strong results in the Western Region where officers were executing search warrants every three days or so based on community information about drug and property crime.

“What we need to do is say to people that every call matters. We need to get back to basic policing so that people feel safe and comfortable in their homes as they go about their business,” Mr Worboys said.

“We get that through police visibility. (It’s about) our officers not walking through the Workers Club (on patrol) without talking to someone.”

He said he was very confident the new model would work and rid a “silo” mentality where stations worked in isolation rather than on a regional basis. No police officer had lost their job, the new structure had removed a top heavy layer and put more resources on the ground, he said. 

In his role, Mr Worboys has a seat at the table in Sydney, asking the question of how decisions affect rural and regional communities. He told the meeting it was the first time it had been done and was making a real difference.

Chamber business development manager and former AFP officer, Geoff Kettle asked whether any thought had been given to paying police trainees as a way of enticing more to the Force.

Mr Worboys replied that this had been contemplated but numbers were not the main issue. Many recruits were from Sydney and it was a challenge to get them to stay in country communities. The solution lay in encouraging interest in a policing career in rural areas from rural people.

“My belief is we should absolutely be the last people to leave country communities,” he said.

Newsagent Jeanine Chatfield told Mr Worboys she didn’t see officers on the beat as frequently near her Auburn Street premises and asked whether he saw value in the notion.

“Absolutely, I encourage that and the officer in charge model will go some way to fixing that,” he said.

“It might be patrols around the hospital or the park…I encourage officers to be excited about policing in this community.”