Police chief pledges to get officers back on street to tackle ‘major crime problem’

Victoria Police’s new chief commissioner has pledged to redirect hundreds of officers from behind desks and back on to the street to tackle a “major crime problem” in the state.

As a part of a shake-up in the force’s operations, Mike Bush promised to create a new 24-hour crime control centre, cut the number of police executives, and create specialised civilian “support” units to free up officers from paperwork.

“We have a major crime problem here in Victoria. There are far too many victims of crime,” Bush said.

“No one should live in fear of people breaking into their homes overnight, stealing cars, carjackings, violence in the street, violence at retail outlets, knife crime. Victoria and the Victorian people should feel safe, whether they go about their business, whether they’re at home, wherever they may be – and we need to address that.”

Bush also complained about the cost of policing regular protests that have been gripping Melbourne since 2023, which have required 25,000 policing shifts.

“They have empathy and compassion for whatever their cause may be – not for us to judge. But what I ask is that they also have empathy and compassion for the people of Melbourne. If I took half of those 25,000 shifts and dedicated them to prevention, we’d have less crime.”

The announcement came on the same day a Hawthorn home owner, dressed only in his underwear, performed a citizen’s arrest on a 15-year-old whom he found inside his Kinkora Rd home about 3.30am on Monday.

Bush said Victoria Police had become bogged down in paperwork, manning windows at police stations and processing people who have been arrested. An internal study had found 1.4 million personnel hours were consumed each year on police officers manning public-facing counters at stations.

Instead, the new chief has proposed creating backroom, “investigation support” and “file briefing” teams staffed with civilians, including tapping into a large pool of retired officers and “people wanting to be investigators”.

“If there’s an attack at a shopping centre, we could deter that by being there in the first place. We would much prefer to be there in that shopping centre than stuck behind a public counter answering a telephone or taking a report that could equally be done by other officers or other staff.”

The plan comes amid a budget crunch for Victoria Police, which is being forced to find up to $2 billion in savings over four years.

Crime is shaping as a key state election issue in 2026, with Opposition Leader Brad Battin saying there is no more important issue.

“It is not us raising this,” Battin told The Age last week. “It is people across the community raising it. That is why it is a big issue. The priority of any government should be to keep you safe and, at the moment, people aren’t feeling safe.”

In a bid to tamp down violent crime and reverse the “lack of trust and confidence in the Victoria Police”, Bush also wants a 24-hour-a-day special coordination centre that can deploy resources to incidents and unfolding crime hotspots.

“The people running that will have the executive authority to deploy 24/7 into crime issues as they arrive. They have the executive’s permission to understand crime as it happens and deploy to prevent it as it occurs,” Bush said.

The chief, who has been in the job for three months since being recruited out of retirement in New Zealand, said there would also be cuts to create a “slimmed-down executive team”, including reducing the number of deputy commissioner positions from six to four.

No other job losses were announced. He said the plan could take at least 12 months to implement after a consultation period.

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