NCJ Number
176775
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 46 Issue: 11 Dated: November 1998 Pages: 66-70
Date Published
1998
Length
5 pages
Annotation
The 144 police officers who patrol for southern command of the Northern Territory Police Service in Alice Springs, Australia use 4-wheel drive vehicles to cover thousands of square miles of waterless desert on patrols that last a maximum of 4 days.
Abstract
Alice Springs is located almost halfway along the 1,865-mile Stuart Highway in the Outback of Australia. The town's population of 27,500 accounts for more than half of the estimated 50,000 residents in the command. About half the population is Aboriginal. The police agency has 120 general duties officers and 24 officers in the Criminal Investigation Bureau. Auxiliaries include Aborigine police officers. The command has several rural police stations and three Aboriginal community police officer stations. The agency uses both patrol vehicles and an airplane. The patrol vehicles have replaced the camels, which were last used in 1953. Twelve officers are assigned to an 8-hour shift in Alice Springs and normally patrol in pairs. The lockup rate averages 45 people a day. The entire command handles between 70 and 90 calls a day. The area has an average of five murders a year, the highest per-capital murder rate in Australia. Other enforcement efforts focus on drunk driving, unregistered vehicles, dangerous driving, problems with tourists, alcohol problems, drug law enforcement, school-based policing, and Neighborhood Watch. Photographs and list of provisions carried on a camel patrol