Police look on, unable to secure lethal hazard zone declared by Western Power, as children continue to work for more than an hour at high risk of electrocution
Front line Police in the South West have reported a disturbing lack of statutory powers following an incident involving an electrical hazard on a South West Farm.
The Police had been called to attend a trespass at a workshop shed which had been declared unsafe due to an electrical hazard. The trespassers included two children who had been instructed by their father to ignore the hazard and carry out work for him in loading goods onto a truck.
The incident arose following a declaration by Western Power that a steel shed was unsafe because of the proximity of high voltage electrical supply lines running above the shed, which had been constructed without building approval. Western Power served a notice on the owner of the property to remedy the hazard and to enclose the shed in a safety barrier until the remedial work was completed.
According to the property owner, a third party who had goods stored in the shed from a prior tenancy ignored the electrical hazard and entered the shed without permission to remove his goods. The trespasser enlisted the help of two of his children who were on holiday from school at the time to do the work.
They took down the hazard barrier which had been erected to prevent access the shed, and they used a truck fitted with a self-loading crane to carry the goods. This introduced an additional hazard into the workplace with the risk that the steel crane jib might contact the wires.
When the uninvited workers ignored the landowners instructions to move clear of the danger area on which they were trespassing, a call was made for Police assistance.
After investigating the situation and consulting with their Command by telephone from the location for more than an hour and a half, attending Police explained to the landowner that they did not have power to remove the children or the other trespassers from the hazard area, but they had been able to persuade the parent to stop work for the time being. During this time the children had continued to work within the declared hazard zone, the overhead lines had remained energized, and the Police had made no attempt to direct any of the trespassers away from the hazard as a precaution.
Following the incident the landowner approached Police Southern District Command and then the Police Minister to confirm whether the attending officers report was correct, that they lacked statutory power to rescue children from a potentially lethal hazard in such circumstances. The Minister expressed his satisfaction at the Police response to the incident, and ignored questions about the complaint by the front line Officers about a lack of statutory power.
After the landowner’s approach to the Minister, Southern District Command labelled his concerns about child welfare issues as “vexatious” “self-serving” and “abhorent”. The landowner is the proprietor of the farm as Executor of a deceased Estate, and the trespasser had earlier lodged a writ against the Estate for an equitable interest in certain land, including the shed and an adjacent house. The Executor is not a beneficiary under the Will and does not stand to benefit from the Estate.
In the light of the Police Minister’s terse response several questions remain to be answered. If Police do not have power to bring children to safety in these circumstances, why have legislators failed to address the deficit? In the landowners view, the incident was a sentinel event in regard to child protection which deserves the careful attention of legislators before other children are left at risk in similar circumstances.
The incident also raises questions about Police policy in relation to risk assessment. In this instance it appears that they were not satisfied with Western Power’s expert risk assessment of the hazard as potentially lethal, and downgraded the risk to suit their own operational assessment. This resulted in the immediate safety interests of the trespassers being ignored. The discrepancy between the Western Power assessment of the hazard as potentially lethal and the Police assessment that the shed was a safe environment in which to work also remains unexplained.
Later on the same day, Detectives from Busselton attended the farm and advised the landowner he was under investigation for the “misuse of Police resources”, as a result of his request for Police assistance regarding the trespassers. Police had attended the same property some months earlier following a trespass by a squatter who had entered a vacant dwelling on the farm and had refused to leave.
Under work safety legislation failure on the part of a proprietor to prevent access to a hazardous workplace can attract a fine of $25000 on the first offence.