CASE PROGRAM 2008-64.2 Reorganising Victoria Police’s approach to crime (B) Although the level of gangland violence had subsided by mid-2004, Victoria Police was still under considerable public and political pressure. Simon Overland (then Assistant Commissioner of the Crime Department) and his colleagues realised that some fundamental changes had to be made, but he also believed that taking a defensive stance was not the way forward. With the support of Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon, he organised a two-day summit attended by the Premier and senior state government officials, international police experts and criminologists. In a move that surprised many, the summit was open to the media and included guests who had been publicly critical of Victoria Police. “I think people privately thought I was mad,” recalled Overland, “but they also saw that I was probably carrying the risk around that. We were very honest about the situation and that we hadn’t picked up on it early enough which really took our critics by surprise. It also showed the government that we were prepared to think differently going ahead.” Soon thereafter, the state government allocated funds for a reorganisation. The search for a suitable consultancy firm began in late 2004 and a Police team was established to oversee the project, headed by Detective Superintendent Paul Hollowood. Although they weren’t clear at this stage what they would do, the team was clear on what they didn’t want: an off-the-shelf model borrowed from another jurisdiction and tweaked slightly to suit Victoria Police. Following a competitive tender, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was chosen, in part, noted Hollowood, because they seemed more prepared to listen and approach the problem with a fresh perspective. BCG’s main clients were large corporations such as financial institutions and airlines, however, in recent years the company had expanded into public sector consultancy at This case was written by Marinella Padula, Australia and New Zealand School of Government, for Professor John Alford and Professor Amanda Sinclair as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The assistance of Christine Nixon, Simon Overland, Paul Hollowood, Craig Howard, Toni Campbell and Larry Kamener is gratefully acknowledged, however they are not responsible for the content herein. Cases are not necessarily intended as a complete account of the events described. While every reasonable effort has been made to ensure accuracy at the time of publication, subsequent developments may mean that certain details have since changed. This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence, except for logos, trademarks, photographs and other content marked as supplied by third parties. No licence is given in relation to third party material. Version 7-05-2008. Distributed by the Case Program, The Australia and New Zealand School of Government, www.anzsog.edu.au. both the state and federal level. Although aware that policing had many special characteristics, BCG Partner Larry Kamener believed that insights gained from the private sector could be successfully applied to the Force. Upon BCG’s appointment, a joint BCG-Victoria Police team was established at the St Kilda Road complex, comprising four full-time BCG consultants working alongside eight detectives from Victoria Police. Questions and more questions One of the first priorities, according to Kamener, was to get a handle on exactly what the police did. “Not only did they not know how their resources were being deployed,” he said, “they also had no way of classifying different crime types in any useful way. Many other organisations like hospitals for example, do triage which allows them to assess the degree of complexity or urgency of a particular medical case. That didn’t exist in the Police.” Data was limited and where data existed, it was overly complicated and of little value. He and his team began by spending time shadowing detectives to get a feel for the nature of their work. They decided that instead of collecting detailed time and motion information, which police were in any case reluctant to supply, they instead simply asked detectives to estimate the percentage of their working week spent on each of each of their current investigations. This, they argued, would provide sufficiently powerful management information with little intrusion. At the same time, BCG conducted intensive focus group and interview sessions within Victoria Police and with its key stakeholders to pinpoint problems and possible solutions. They were particularly interested in tapping into the thoughts of opinion leaders within the Force – in other words, those individuals who commanded the most peer influence and respect. Kamener was well aware of the historic distrust towards management. Indeed, as Business Services Manager Toni Campbell recalled, “Many people didn’t believe that we didn’t already have a model and that we were asking them questions and genuinely interested in the answers.” Yet despite widespread misgivings, Kamener and his team received a better reception from police than anticipated: “We were expecting a very high level of suspicion but it wasn’t as much of a problem as we thought. We were very upfront about the fact that we weren’t there because we were police experts. It might have been refreshing for them for people to come in from outside without fixed views on how to do police work.” Kamener was also careful not to encourage false hope: “You go and interview people and they want more of everything – more equipment, more specialists, more covert surveillance – and all of those specialist resources were always quite scarce. In the original communication about the project it was made quite clear that this was not a project designed to determine the right level of resources for police. It was a project designed to say: ‘Given the level of resources we’ve got, what is the best way we should organise ourselves?’ We were able to manage people’s expectations and government was comfortable that it wasn’t simply a bid for extra resources. It also encouraged people to think more creatively rather than get the shopping list out.” 2 Model building While the interviews provided many valuable insights, there was still a great deal of work ahead. “Most people interviewed could identify where the problems were in the Force but not how to solve them,” noted Hollowood. But one positive discovery was that members generally recognised the need for change and were prepared for it to happen. One of the biggest problems for the Police-BCG team was how to build flexibility into Victoria Police instead of throwing resources at problem after problem. What they wanted was a model that was more strategic, dynamic, collaborative and developmental. It needed to be a model that could better anticipate future needs and accommodate a degree of continual improvement, obviating the need for larger overhauls. During 2005, there were many discussions around how the new Victoria Police should work. Kamener outlined some of the options: “The models we looked at ranged from something like the status quo to, at the other extreme, disbanding all the squads and turning the Crime Department into a pool of several hundred detectives that could be allocated to any investigation. In the middle, we had a number of other models, including the one we ended up with which was the notion that there would be squads but that they would be quite fluid. That was pretty contentious even though there was some relief that we weren’t getting rid of squads altogether. There was a lot of nervousness amongst police about anything that might touch the squads because for many police your number one allegiance is to the squad.” Victoria Police was keen to retain teams because, as Hollowood pointed out, the nature of modern policing meant that it was very difficult for a single detective to pursue a case completely independently and also because, “if you pull individuals together it takes time to figure out strengths and weaknesses and for them to bond.” They also wanted to ensure that domain-specific expertise wasn’t lost. Ultimately, they decided that the Crime Department divisions and some squads would be abolished but that detectives would still be assigned to a specific workgroup. These would be either a squad based around a specific crime type such as homicide, or a tasked workgroup that would act like small taskforces in response to emerging areas of need. This, they hoped, would foster the development of what Kamener described as “T-shaped” investigators: detectives with broad, generalist skills, as well as a deeper understanding of one or more specific areas. In terms of specialist resources, BCG suggested the creation of centralised “crime desks” that were organised according to particular crime themes and staffed by experts who were able to provide support and advice to detectives in the Crime Department and the regions. The crime desks would also act in a strategic capacity, monitoring trends and developments and helping to determine future resource allocation (Exhibit A). Another key part of the plan was a new system to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the Crime Department in relation to the regions. Called the Accountability and Resource Model (ARM), it outlined who would lead what type of investigation and what mix of resources would be used (Exhibit B). Under the new model, for example, straightforward homicides would be investigated by the regions with support from the crime department. Another feature of the new system was increased capacity to review investigations on a regular basis and re-classify them accordingly. 3 Implementation In June 2005, the plan was signed off, and the implementation phase began in July that year.