Further Detail

The YSM dashboards continue to be a key analytical tool for informing the YSM Diamond Group and YSM Champions Network of current trends and reporting rates.

Since the last YSM update in November 2023 assaults on officers and staff have continued to increase. To date, assaults have increased by 5.5% (223) compared to the previous fiscal year and is above the 5-year average by 2.1%.

The table below illustrates the changes across each division which continues to be closely monitored by the YSM secretariat and YSM Champions Network.

Assaults per 1K incidents have increased across all divisions except for C Division and D Division as demonstrated in the table. This data will be explored further through the YSM Champions Network and Use of Force Monitoring group to ascertain any learning points, increase figures in reporting.

Despite the increases in assaults on officers and staff, the injury rate for assaults has decreased by 0.6% which could infer that OST tactics are more effective but more importantly the Health and Safety reporting rate has increased by 4.9%.

The increase in location data from the current fiscal year shown below coincides with the increase in the number of assaults against officers and staff and the increase in reporting.

It is worth noting that although there has been a rise in each of the top five location, there has been a significant rise (89.2%) in assaults at commercial properties. It could be inferred that this may be due to the rise in retail crime and will be investigated further by analysts and reported back through the YSM Diamond Group and Champions Network.

Research papers

Through observations in data trends, analysts produced deep dive reports on assaults on officers and staff in and around vehicles and assaults within police premises.

Both papers provided recommendations that were fully explored through the YSM Champions Network, Officer Safety Training (OST) department and Criminal Justice Service Department (CJSD).

The OST department fully explored recommendation 3 from the deep dive into assaults in and around a police vehicle (due to the heightened level of risk, OST to review assaults that took place in/around a third-party vehicle (personal vehicle) to ensure procedure is most effective)

Options on sourcing vehicles during OST recertification training were explored and funding was secured for functional padded training vehicles for each geographical training venue, allowing officers to practice securing, manoeuvring and extracting arrested persons.

Funding was also secured by the OST department for training cells following the recommendation from the paper on assaults within police premises recommending a focus on training in a police cell with the objective of reducing assaults and injury rates in this area.

Both pieces of equipment have recently arrived within the training venues and will be utilised through the program syllabus going forward.

The second recommendation in assaults in police premises asked for CJSD to investigate into reporting rates of assaults that are against officers and staff to improve data quality and reliability.

As previously noted, Health and Safety reporting rates have again increased across the organisation by 4.9%. The importance of reporting has been reiterated not only to CJSD but to all within the YSM Champions Network to ensure the quality of comparative analysis can be achieve a higher standard.