Policing issues — NSW Police College is doing fine
I have read the second part of a series by Terry Odgers in issue 6 of your Destiny magazine. Whilst I can agree with some of the criticisms he makes about the management of the NSW Police Force, I disagree with his continued lambasting of the efforts of those who work and teach in the NSW Police College.
I have been teaching here since 1994, initially while still a police officer teaching on PREP and then later (and still currently) with Charles Sturt University on the Diploma of Policing Practice and now across a number of both recruit and graduate courses.
One of the most important things an officer can have with him or her when they go out into the ‘real world’ is as good an understanding as possible of the society that they are about to go and police. That doesn’t just involve learning how to shoot & fight with people and how to train to get to get stronger and tougher. If Odgers wants that, then unfortunately he has been born 100 years too late. Nothing wrong with training and hardening up – I still do it and I’m not even a cop anymore. However, if you want to police a modern society, then you also need to understand a little bit about a whole range of things from Law, through investigative practice and ethical decision making and then onto stuff like learning about police information systems and so on. This is done in military training as well and also just about any other advanced policing education program anywhere in the world.
Of course if Odgers is complaining that the police College teaches ‘things by the book’ instead of how things are in the real world, then he is more ignorant than I feared. Before one even contemplates expediency and tactical response in real-world situations, one has to be well informed about legislation & ‘by-the-book’ requirements, so that one can then gauge the level of risk within any situation and then make a decision from a well informed and well thought-out perspective. The ability to think critically about what one does and to learn to reflect on one’s performance is about as basic a requirement to good practice as is waking up each day. If Odgers chooses to label the College’s efforts in producing rookie police who can think for themselves, problem solve and not succumb to poor occupational culture – as “airy-fairy” – then he displays his own lack of understanding about critical matters of performance and intelligence. Concepts of Multiple Intelligence & Emotional Intelligence are important in being able to firstly recognise one’s own strengths and weaknesses, before one even contemplates recognising & dealing with these in others – but what the heck, this must just be an “airy-fairy” rant I’m embarking on.
Terry Odgers – I sympathise with you about the contemporary management of the NSW Police operationally – but your derision of the NSW Police College efforts in producing quality police is unfair, unjustified and unfortunate. ~ P. Ivanoff
Terry Odgers offers a reply on page 19
Wrong prize for Obama
The decision in October to award a Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Hussein Obama has to be the most stupid and biased action ever by the Nobel Foundation. Nominations for the prize had to be sent in by the 1st of February 2009, only 12 days after Obama took office. He had done nothing for world peace by then and has done nothing spectacular for world peace since, certainly nothing more than past presidents.
This award has obviously been given to him because all the multiculti mob are rapt that they now have “the first black President of the USA”, although actually he should be called “coloured” not “black” as he is half white and half black — people forget that he has turned his back on his white parent so he could talk up his black identity.
Giving Obama the Peace Prize just because he is “black” is outrageous racial discrimination. If he had any shame he would give it back. But I am not going to hold my breath for that. ~ W. O’Sullivan
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