Police shortages hit Brunswick station
• Station undermanned by 27%
• Area’s crime increases by 10% year on year
Mark Phillips
Monday, February 17, 2025
BRUNSWICK Police Station is severely understaffed and unable to respond to all requests from the public, one of the district’s most senior officers has conceded.
Speaking at a public forum in late November, the then-acting officer in charge of the station, Senior-Sergeant Brad Colbert, said the station’s head count was 27% below what it should be due to the inability of the Victoria Police to recruit new officers combined with officers being off work because of injury or other workplace related health issues.
The shortage – equivalent to 17 officers – was having an impact on the station’s ability to follow up on non-urgent reports of crime and other requests, he said. His comments came as quarterly crime statistics revealed total criminal incidents recorded in the Brunswick area (postcodes 3055, 3056 and 3057) rose by 9.9% in the year to September 2024.
Colbert said he was not using staff numbers as an excuse for poor service, but it was a reality that the public had to understand.
He said the staffing issues at Brunswick were the same across the state despite a recruitment drive by Victoria Police. He also suggested that Brunswick police were often dealing with backlogs of paperwork that sometimes impacted on responsiveness.
Colbert was speaking at a business information session on security and safety organised by the Sydney Road Brunswick Association on November 18 last year, which can also be viewed online.
“Like many businesses at the moment, we’re feeling the crunch in relation to employment … Just in Brunswick alone we’re down 27% of our people, so that’s 17 members we’re down,” Colbert told the meeting.
“If we had an extra 17 members on the road, there’s no doubt you’d get better customer service from us. So it is a struggle … The members on the [divisional] van who are primarily responding to the jobs, they do it tough, a lot tougher than I did when I was first on the divisional van.
“There’s a lot of demands, they’re being pulled pillar to post doing a lot of overtime and they’re just trying to do their best and just trying to keep their head above water.”
Brunswick was among 43 stations across Victoria that were forced to reduce their opening hours last year due to staffing shortages so it could focus resources on frontline policing.
It is now open for 24 hours only from Thursday to Saturday, and closes after 10pm other days. Prior to the changes it was open for 24 hours seven days a week.
When the changes were announced in late-2023, Victoria Police command insisted they would have no impact on policing in the community and instead would free up officers to be out on the streets.
Crime in Brunswick at a glance
Total criminal incidents
+9.9%
compared to previous year
2023
3860
2024
4242
Source: Victorian Crime Statistics Agency
Total crime incidents reported for year ending September 30; sorted by postcode. Click on image to see it full size.
But the shortages in Brunswick when writ large shed extra light on last week’s vote of no confidence by members of The Police Association which forced the resignation on Sunday night of the Chief Commissioner, Shane Patton.
Union members cited poor recruitment and excessive workloads – along with an increase in youth and violent crime – as reasons why they had lost confidence in Patton.
The union did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Prior to the release of the results of the vote of no confidence, Victoria Police told Brunswick Voice that it was making inroads to the recruitment shortages and the public could be assured there would be no loss of service in Brunswick.
“Brunswick police station is meeting service requirements,” said the Merri-bek local area commander, Inspector Andrew Markakis.
“The temporary reduction in reception counter hours at Brunswick police station does not mean the actual police station is closed.
“We have divisional vans out on the roads every shift, every day of the week.”
At the traders’ forum in November, Colbert urged people to not give up if the first time they called police there was no immediate response. He said sometimes the Brunswick divisional van would be tied up, but if a situation escalated police could be requested from elsewhere.
“We do know the frustration across the community when you call Triple Zero and the police don’t come,” he said.
“There’s a lot of triaging that goes on with police jobs and dispatching of jobs.
“There’s only one divisional van normally that works out of Brunswick, and they could be tied up with a family violence incident, mental health patient, shop theft, there’s lots of stuff they can be tied up with so we rely on other police stations coming in and assisting from other areas.”
Crime in the three Brunswick postcodes surged to an eight year high in 2024, with 4242 offences recorded in the year ending on September 30, according to the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency. That was the highest total since 4329 offences in the same period in 2016, and was a 9.9% increase on the same period last year.
However, this was below the statewide increase of 15% for the year to September 30.
The biggest increase in the local area was in Brunswick West, where crime incidents rose by 22.9% to 978 in 2024.
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