New police join the force in Surf Coast

MORE than 20 new police officers have started across Geelong, Colac and the Surf Coast since July as part of the biggest investment in regional policing in Victoria Police’s 167-year history.
In March, Victoria Police announced the Geelong and Surf Coast Police Service Areas would receive 63 extra police over the following 12 months – the most new police provided to the region in one allotment.
Since this announcement, eight frontline constables have already started at stations across Bellarine, Torquay, Colac and Winchelsea, while a new sergeant has also started at Portarlington and will lead a team of eight permanent police members.
Two of the five new officers in the Surf Coast Police Service Area are Constable Bill Dow and Constable Paul Thomas.
Constable Dow, who grew up in the Otways, said he had previously spent a lot of time working with young people, including at children’s camps.
“I’ve primarily worked with kids, so that’s what led me to get into some community work. I moved to Geelong seven or eight years ago, and ever since then, I’ve wanted to join up and have more involvement with the community.”
Constable Thomas is originally from Gisborne and also moved to the Geelong region about seven years ago.
“I’ve always wanted to join, but now I’m a bit older and I thought I’d give it a crack,” he said. “I’ve got my own kids, so I thought I’d do something to help the community and give them a better upbringing if I could.”
As well as the constables, 13 shared divisional resources, including family violence detectives, sex offences and child abuse detectives, criminal investigators, and highway patrol members, have also already started. A further 17 officers are set to join by early April 2021, as well as another 24 specialised members working across family violence, sex offences and child abuse, highway patrol, criminal investigations and crime scene services.
Geelong police Superintendent Craig Gillard said the new police had already provided a substantial boost to policing efforts across the local community.
“We used these new resources to establish the Geelong Sexual Offences & Child Abuse Proactive Investigation Team, which proactively targets some of our region’s most heinous offenders and puts them behind bars as soon as possible.”
“We’ve also boosted the number of family violence detectives in the region, who will continue to work as part of Operation Ribbon to proactively check in on those who are assessed as high risk future victims or perpetrators of family violence.”