How Victoria Police is overhauling its approach to local policing

Police across the state are overhauling the way they do local policing in coming months.

Police are returning to a ‘neighbourhood’ model, focusing on community engagement and responding to what residents say are the biggest issues their communities are facing.

The approach has been trialled in eight areas, including Hume, and will be rolled out statewide by March.

Hume local area commander, Inspector Dean Clinton, says it’s a shift from intel-led policing.

“Traditionally we’ve worked off intel led policing, policing what we believe are the issues impacting the community most. Sometimes those issues are not actually the issues that the community is seeing everyday,” he told Neil Mitchell.

“In our area, for instance ,we’ve got what we call the Hume Neighbourhood Policing Local Safety Committee, we’ve got about 170 people in that committee, but each of those people are representative of a Facebook group of say 5000 residents in a new estate.”

Hoon driving has emerged as the biggest issue of community concern in Hume, and unregistered dirt bikes also rank highly.

Press PLAY below to hear about the new approach to local policing