After being severely criticised for advising Indian students to look "poor" to avoid attacks, Victorian Police Commissioner Simon Overland has now appealed to the community members to join his force in a bid to develop "greater trust and understanding" with them.
"The Victorian community is the most ethnically diverse in Australia. It is important that our police reflect this and that we attract officers from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, including the Indian community," Overland told a news conference yesterday.
This is the only way through which "greater trust and understanding" can be created with the community, said the Police Commissioner, who came under heavy criticism from the Indian community and other groups in February for his remarks that Indian students should look poor in a bid to avoid attacks on them.
"Policing is a worthwhile and credible profession which is rewarding, challenging and a secure career choice. We have high standards and want the best people for the job irrelevant of where you were born or your racial or religion background.
"It is all about your skills and ability and we want our recruits to demonstrate our key values of integrity, leadership, flexibility, respect, support and professionalism," Overland said.
Against the backdrop of a series of attacks on Indian students in Australia, there has been a strong demand to include more Indian faces in the local police force.
Overland said that in July this year Victoria Police would launch an official recruit advertising campaign to help employ 1700 additional front line police personnel over the next five years.
Victoria Police figures compiled in January this year showed that nine per cent of potential police recruits were born in India, three per cent in Pakistan and 2.4 per cent in Sri Lanka.
Of the 11,904 police officers working for Victoria Police in January, 730 or just 6.1 per cent were born overseas, including 34 officers born in the Indian sub-continent.
Overland said he wanted to see this figure increase considerably and attract more officers with diverse cultural backgrounds.
Overland was joined by several Indian-origin police members who shared their positive experiences with the media.
Dinesh Nettur of Indian and Sri Lankan descent, who had joined Victoria Police in 1997, said there were only a couple of police personnel of Indian background then.
"Police officers experience something new everyday and the outcomes are quite rewarding. I definitely encourage people of all backgrounds to join Victoria Police as we really need people from different cultures and who can speak different languages," Nettur said.
"Getting through the Academy is not an easy thing to do but we all support each other to realise our dreams."
According to another Senior Constable Ash Dixit, based in Melbourne West Police Station, who came to Australia 11 years ago as a business student, it was a dream come true when he joined the force.
"For me it all happened by chance. My housemate went to visit the Victoria Police Museum and came back with a plastic bag which said Victoria Police - Join Now and I thought why not," Dixit said.
"In India you cannot join the police force once you are 28 but when I called Victoria Police they said I wasn't too old to apply. Some of my friends said I was crazy and that it would be a waste of my business degree but I knew this was what I wanted to do," he said.
According to Dilbar Singh, who came as an international student, "I thought I would give it a go. Everyone was so helpful through every step of the recruitment process and I made some really good friends at the Academy."
"It is the best job with so much variety. There are so many different areas you can work in, you go out and face unexpected things. It's a different world and when you attend incidents you are the leader, it is up to you to take charge of the situation as people are relying on you. It is very rewarding work."
For Manjot Singh, who was also an international student, it was a hard journey as he faced a lot of difficulty settling into the Australian way of life, relying on wise advice from his mother back in India to get him through.
However, he said he was now a proud ambassador for Victoria Police and for the broader multicultural community.
Source:http://in.news.yahoo.com
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