Night Patrol workshop

A three-day workshop held recently at ATSIC
in Tennant Creek gave everyone involved a
chance to have their say about the
future direction of Night Patrol

We asked some of the participants their views ...

Geoffrey Shannon:
I'm the Community Development Officer at Julalikari Council. We organised a workshop to talk about how we can work more effectively within the Night Patrol and to work with the police in the community.
We've also asked other communities to come in. Lake Nash, Elliott and Gurungu Council are coming in too.
We also had the police come in to talk to them. One of the things we've been discussing is training and education for our Night Patrol members. We'd like to have some training so that they can do their job much more effectively.
They'll then have skills, they need skills like knowing how to use the radio properly, documenting events on paper so they can collect data and statistics. Night Patrolers can record where they take people at night, maybe to the dry-out or maybe they call the police to come and see what people have done. Maybe put people in the lock-up or they might take them home.

Senior Sergeant Gillian Smith:
I've just come to Tennant Creek a few weeks ago and I found the workshops very interesting It's a very good initiative and I'm hoping that it all works out well.
It has total police support. We want to assist and support in whatever way that we can to make it work and increase the professionalism of the Night Patrol. We work as closely as we can with the Night Patrol to make the community better and safer for everybody.

Valda Shannon:
I'm a member of the Night Patrol here in Tennant Creek. I was also the Facilitator of the workshops.
Being a Night Patrol member and working for this community, it has made our people feel good about the service we are providing, not only for Aboriginal people but also for the non-Aboriginal people of this community. It spreads out into the bush communities.
One of the things that our communities are trying to understand is Zero Tolerance. It's a new thing, a new word, it's very new and very foreign to our people. After all the discussions yesterday we sat down and talked about it.
It just means management of social problems in community hands and we realised we've been doing it for many years since we started the Patrol Programs. Our Patrol programs in the Barkly are all voluntary and we're talking about how our people should be trained.
Before we do that we'll be looking at getting our people paid so that the Night Patrol becomes one of the legitimate services in the community. We're doing up an accredited training package so that people can train and get Abstudy and do Night Patrol, we're looking at things like that and I think it's a really good thing to work towards.

Peter Graham:
I'm the Sergeant in charge of Ali Curung Police Station. I've come in to Tennant to attend this Night Patrol workshop. So far I've learnt quite a bit about what's going on in Tennant Creek and some of the other communities. Ali Curung are at present in the throws of setting up their own Night Patrol and some of the stations have got quite a few concerns about what they can do and how police can support them. So when we start training our people out at Ali Curung, I'll be able to assist them in working very closely and hopefully we'll have a very efficient Night Patrol, which will make my job a lot easier!