In response to The Age’s article about the Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT), the allegations about them having a toxic and bullying culture are simply untrue. These allegations do not represent the highly professional and well trained team that I have come to know.

In fact, the CIRT team I know works around the clock to keep the community safe. They are the team that our general duty officers call when they need support during the most critical of incidents. Because of this, they are often placed in extremely dynamic and high risk situations.

In the past 12-months alone they responded to almost 600 jobs. They assisted general duty officers with more than 200 high-risk arrests and successfully apprehended offenders. They also dealt with violent armed offenders, hostage negotiations and firearms incidents. On top of this, our CIRT team saved 149 lives when they were called out to self-harm incidents. That is 149 lives they saved to no fanfare – it’s just part of their job.

They also operate CIRT security teams around the clock in Melbourne so they can respond to major incidents if and when they occur. On average they respond to jobs within four-and-a-half minutes, but often they get to the scene much quicker than this. When 17 pedestrians were struck with a vehicle in Flinders Street in December 2017, the CIRT security team responded within 40 seconds of it being reported. They also responded within a minute when the Bourke Street terror attack occurred in November last year.

To have a rapid response from a specialist support team within this time is something the community should feel comforted by. As the Deputy Commissioner overseeing this team, I know I am very proud of all of the men and women in CIRT and what they are doing to keep the community safe. They are regularly the frontline against armed offenders and in high risk situations. Their role is vital and they are a professional team that deserve our gratitude and respect.