Police did not achieve a reduction in personal crime across Canberra in 2020-21, according to data released in the ACT budget this week.
ACT Policing is not due to table its annual report in the ACT Assembly until December, however, limited ACT budget data provides an early indication of performance.
It revealed that police recorded 822.9 "known and reported" offences per 100,000 people in 2020-21. This is above the target of less than 800 per 100,000 of population set as a strategic objective and comes after lengthy periods of COVID-19 lockdown across the territory, in which hotels, clubs, bars and nightclubs were shut.
However, ACT police performed better in suppressing property crime, its reported numbers falling well below the target of 4875 offences per 100,000 people.
ACT Policing is a contracted service to the ACT government, supplied by the Australian Federal Police which internally designates the community policing service as "outcome two".
Infrastructure such as police stations and the Winchester headquarters at Belconnen are leased from the ACT government through the Justice and Community Services directorate, which is also in charge of the overall service contract.
The total annual cost to the territory of the ACT's police service, as reported in the budget, was $196.5 million in 2021-22.
The police-supplied forensic medical contract was extended in this week's ACT budget at a cost of $975,000 a year, and a further $5.8 million was set aside specifically to relocate the Traffic Operations Centre from its current base in Lathlain St, Belconnen, to a much larger, fully-roofed facility in Hume.
While the traffic teams' current facility is an ongoing workplace health and safety issue, shifting out to the new facility during the pandemic has proved problematic as police duties have had to shift and pivot in response to border lockdown duties and other COVID demands.
As expected, no funding was set aside in the budget for a new police station at Gunghalin, although the joint emergency services facilities there - which police share with ambulance and firefighters - did receive a modest $519,000 boost for facility improvements.
A further $6.1 million has been set aside for the Gungahlin facility in the 2022-23 fiscal year, although the details of how that money will be spent is not defined.
The police association said it expected this budget to be a health-focused one, but had hoped for improved outcome for officers working in the ACT's most crowded station, given that crime team members working there have to wheel their computers in and out of the station's conference room each day and officers have to take their meals on the handling table also used for bloodied exhibits from crime scenes.
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