The current narrative around family violence places the responsibility and blame on police. Three-quarters of the recommendations that came out of the royal commission were levelled at us. Never mind the fact that the only real way to eliminate family violence is the widespread education of children at a formative age so as to normalise respectful relationships built around women's rights and equality. That would require forward thinking and emotional intelligence.

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In the area of mental health, police get crucified for not preventing violent offences, or criticised for not being trained in speaking to and managing people experiencing psychiatric crisis. Apparently it's irrelevant that our mental health system is devastatingly under-resourced and lacking in adequate mechanisms to treat at-need patients.

Don't get me wrong, I get it. It's far easier to lay blame than it is to take it, and we at Victoria Police are an easy target. From the outside looking in, we appear to be a nameless, faceless and homogenous organisation. For this reason, we're easy to dehumanise and generate outrage against. Added bonus: it fits in well with the popular anti-police culture seeping into Australia from the US.

Then there's the over-hyped African gang problem. One side says there is a massive issue at hand, and that our community is in dire risk of moral and ethical destruction. The other side says there is no problem, and anyone who says otherwise is racist. And then there's us, the police, trying to approach the problem in a fair and balanced way, while being stuck between warring social narratives and agendas. It's only getting worse now that we're on the eve of a particularly heated state election centred on a law-and-order debate.