Victoria Police has responded to recent legal advice that PSOs may, in some circumstances, be acting without legislative authority when arresting persons on ‘fail to appear at court’ warrants.
Police officers have now been deployed to support PSO teams at railway stations to ensure that persons wanted by the courts are still being arrested.
These interim measures will remain in place for a number of weeks while legislative changes are developed that will resolve the issue.
Acting Deputy Commissioner Bob Hill Regional Operations said, “Our PSOs do an exceptional job keeping people safe on our public transport system. Every day they step forward, protecting the community and making arrests, in good faith and in accordance with their training.
“The issue we have identified relates to a very small percentage of the total arrests made by PSOs, as few as one or two a day. It was an issue created in the drafting of the original legislation which supported the inception of the PSO Transit Policing Model in 2011.
“We are working on a fix with the state government to ensure our PSOs continue to have the powers they need.
“In the interim, we have additional transit police deployed supporting their PSO colleagues on the transport system. Let me be very clear on this point: if you are wanted on warrant and engaged by our PSOs and police, you will be arrested and bought to justice.”
PSOs have routinely arrested people on fail to appear warrants since their expansion onto the public transport network in 2011, under provisions within the Magistrates Court Act. Last year approximately 500 such arrests were made.
However, it was recently discovered that the majority of these warrants have been addressed in a way which affords arrest powers to police only, and not PSOs.
A/DC Hill added: “It’s important to appreciate, the majority of the 500 arrest warrants executed last year involved persons being lawfully arrested by PSOs who witnessed the commission of other criminal offending. Execution of the fail to appear warrants was subsequent to the arrest.
“The issue we are dealing with is limited to the rare occasions when PSOs are making arrests solely because they have identified a person as being wanted on a warrant, and some of those warrants are currently addressed to exclude PSOs.”
