Tasmania Police

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General Duties

Beat Patrol

Police officers are required to undertake regular beat patrol duties.  They can expect to encounter and manage unacceptable street behaviour such as drunkenness, fights, damage to property, indecent or offensive language.  Officers also attend to such reports as shop stealing, motor vehicle crashes, burglaries, and traffic offences. They provide assistance to the public and advice and guidance where required, helping in any way they can.

Mobile Patrol

Patrolling police officers are expected to be vigilant and observant to the possibility of crime, driving offences or street offences being committed. They are required to undertake duties focused on such priorities as reduction of crime, reduction of serious road traffic crashes, increasing safety within the community and reducing family violence.  During their patrols, they frequently become involved in managing a very broad range of matters, including:

• Assisting members of the public;
• Undertaking public relations activities;
• Establishing and being involved in community and police partnerships;
• Attending street fights, hotel fights, drunken behaviour;
• Attending motor vehicle crashes, “hooning” incidents;
• Attending business/residential burglaries and stealing;
• Attending all deaths, whether suspicious, natural causes or unexplained;
• Coordinating searches for missing persons, concerns for safety of persons;
• Detecting driving offences, particularly inattentive driving offences;
• Attending reports of sexual assaults, serious and minor assaults;
• Detecting drug and alcohol-related offences; and
• Resolving family violence matters.

As a first response unit, uniform police officers are required to attend and assess the seriousness of the reported matters. Where appropriate, they may manage the incident in accordance with training and procedure, or they may request specialist units to attend.

Court Evidence

Police officers are regularly required to present evidence in court of matters they have dealt with.  They are required to accurately record their observations, actions and movements when enforcing the law and later present that evidence during proceedings in such courts as the Supreme Court, Magistrates Court, Youth Justice Court, Coronial Inquest and, in some cases, Civil Court.

Investigation

While specialist police may investigate significant and serious crime, general uniform police officers are regularly required to conduct investigations into reported offences.  Investigations include basic crime scene examinations (Fingerprints, DNA samples, photographs and seizing of exhibits as evidence), interviews of witnesses, doorknocking residences or buildings for potential witnesses, exploring all avenues of investigation and interviews of suspects/offenders.

Job Aspects

In summary, being a police officer with Tasmania Police is diverse and challenging.  While it can be unpleasant at times, it is rewarded in the job satisfaction involved with providing assistance to the community, helping victims, and resolving issues and problems.  It offers challenge, diversity, career advancement, security and incentive.  Nothing else compares.