Policing not effective

I am not particularly interested in sitting through another round of "consultation" with Marie Andrews, Chris Hartcher, and the latest Brisbane Waters Police Area Commander.

These people can read reports going back years in back issues of their small town newspapers, if they don't understand why hard-pressed business is not effectively protected against criminal property damage, armed hold-ups and assaults.

An example was seen last week, where the building society right across the road from the understaffed Woy Woy Police station was robbed.

This happens all too often in small towns across the state.

The decades during which we have put up with ridiculously low police numbers on the Woy Woy Peninsula are past any further time wasting discussion.

We are not able to have effectively policed local crime, while senior police are perceived to be too friendly with their elected representatives-employers to speak out publicly about what is in fact an unsafe workplace environment for serving police right across the State.

Ministers have grown up in the Labor party essentially doing nothing about the debilitating effects of low police numbers forced to function with poor equipment.

We all understand that domestic violence makes up the main workload of the pitifully few police we have on duty over night.

They regularly spend five times longer writing up the domestic violence report and attending court, than it takes to attend a complaint.

They are tied up for hours in an attempt to achieve a satisfactory result for the victims, all too often women and children.

The Umina bottle shop has been attacked four times in eight weeks.

Brazen thieves are often seen working at an illegal entry while citizens drive by not wanting to be involved in citizen policing.

Perhaps these passers by wonder at the lack of an effective police presence.

It is all too often an ineffective waste of our time to make the call.

When they do finally arrive, police are burdened with complaints about slow response times and ineffective policing.

Only last fortnight, three police cars were tied up at the Bulls Hill road collapse for hours blocking photographers and reporters and detouring traffic, something which Gosford Council rangers could have done just as effectively and at a lower cost.

This meant we were left for hours with nowhere near enough local police to protect businesses and our personal safety.

These are issues which Marie Andrews, Minister David Campbell and successive Labor governments have had years to correct.

Labor should be kicked right out of the NSW parliament, into the streets where the real work is done.

Edward James Umina