The WA Police Minister has acknowledged that Police did have power to rescue children from an electrical hazard on a South West farm, contrary to advice given by attending Police to the landholder that they were powerless. The admission comes in response to correspondence from the landholder seeking assurance that if there was a lack of legislation in this area that Parliament would close the gap and not leave other children in the same circumstances.
The hazard was identified by a Western Power inspection which found that a metal shed had been built beneath existing powerlines without sufficient vertical and horizontal clearance. The resulting risk was electrical arcing from the 13000 volt overhead lines to ground through the metal shed, which posed a risk of electrocution and incineration to any person coming too close to the shed.
Western Power’s Safety and Compliance Department had previously determined that in order to mitigate the risk prior to finding a permanent solution to the hazard, the landholder must establish a six meter exclusion zone around the shed. Police were called to the property when intruders were found to have entered the exclusion zone, and had ignored the landholders instructions to leave the area for their own safety.
The Minister has now claimed that following discussions with Western Power and their own assessment of the situation, Police had decided that the children were not in any “immediate and substantial danger”. The Minister has not explained why the attending Police misinformed the landholder of their powers, or their reasons for failing to act. He also did not explain why the risk of death by electrocution is not an immediate and substantial danger to a child.
When the landholder then questioned the Minister about the nature and source of the advice from Western Power, given that it contradicted earlier advice to the landholder, the Minister’s Office refused to comment, and referred the landholder to Western Power, saying the question was not a Policing matter.
The Minister ignored the landholder’s questions about the safety of the attending officers which was also compromised by this debacle. The WA Police have a published risk assessment policy which clearly requires any operation which involves risk of death to be declared dangerous. By failing to acknowledge the risk of death from the electrical hazard posed by the shed, Police Southern Command put the officer’s lives at risk by failing to brief them on the situation they would be attending. This was despite the landholder briefing Southern Command about the situation which might develop at the farm at least an hour prior to Police being called to the property. The attending officers also entered and remained within the exclusion zone imposed by Western Power for an extended period, apparently oblivious to the risk the shed represented to them and the intruders.
In dismissing the concerns of the landholder, Southern District Command drew attention to the good record of the Western Australian Police in regard to the care of children, as if this good record could redeem the evident failure in this incident. In rushing to their own defence, Police Command overlooked that the landholder was not questioning the record of WA Police in regard to the care of children in general, but was questioning their conduct only in regard this particular incident, where the Police appear to have allowed issues of law to come before the immediate needs of the children.
“I tried to reassure them that I was not on a witch hunt. I just didn’t want it to happen to any other children in the future” the landholder said. “In a learning culture, organisations welcome feedback and questions regarding operational performance, to enable errors to be identified and procedures to be improved. I have seen no evidence of a learning culture here. Unlike other Departments of Government, the WA Police do not seem to see themselves as accountable to the public, or the Minister.”
“First they tried to ignore me, then they tried to bully me, then they mislead the Minister, and now the Minister has egg on his face for trusting his Department had fully briefed him on the incident and its aftermath. And as for sending me off to Western Power to see if it was the receptionist or the janitor who gave them the advice they acted on, it is ridiculous.”
“It was the Police who had responsibility for the safety of the children on that day, not Western Power. It is the Police who should account for themselves as to why they failed, and it is the Minister who should insist on it, and not merely pass on their lame excuses.”
According to the landholder, it is now obvious to any reasonable person that there were serious errors of judgement made on the day by Police. A failure to learn from an adverse event, when the error involves the downgrading of catastrophic risk to a rule of thumb “she’ll be right”, also has an obvious potential for future tragic consequences to both members and the public.
The WA Police Union were contacted but offered no comment on the work health and safety implications of the incident for their members, and why the risk assessment matrix published as part of Police work health policy was not used by Police Command to correctly assess the risk in this incident.