Rampant sexual harassment, bullying across police force
Duncan Murray |
A culture of rampant bullying, sexual harassment and discrimination has been revealed across the NSW Police force in a wide-ranging review.
Many officers were too afraid to speak up against what they were experiencing, the review of thousands of current and former staff revealed.
Every woman who spoke to the review described experiences of overt or covert sexual harassment, undermining, and belittlement at some time during their service.
The review was commissioned in 2024 by then NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb following reports of a toxic culture across the police force and led by former Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner, Kristen Hilton.
Current NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon accepted all 29 recommendations of the review.
The commissioner said he was committed to ensuring NSW Police was a safe and inclusive workforce.
“Behaviours such as bullying, discrimination, and harassment … are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Mr Lanyon told reporters on Thursday.
“The review also found that there was a culture where people feared speaking up against those behaviours.
I have made it clear, and I have made it clear to our workforce that that is not the culture we all have in the NSW Police Force.”
More than 5000 current and former staff engaged with the review, either through face-to-face interviews, online surveys, written submissions or group discussions.
“Based on this data, it is clear that bullying, incivility, discrimination and victimisation are occurring at unacceptable levels within NSWPF and present systemic risk,” Ms Hilton said in the review.
Ms Hilton stressed the importance of top-down culture in organisations like NSW Police, to establish “what gets tolerated, what gets rewarded, and what gets ignored”.
“We saw how culture shapes how people behave, how decisions are made, how teams hold together under pressure and what’s valued,” Ms Hilton told reporters.
A comprehensive picture emerged while conducting the review she said of the enthusiasm of officers being often dampened by stress, disrespect, fatigue, inequity and trauma.
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AAP