POLICE PLAN TO MERGE FAIRFIELD AND CABRAMATTA

Senior police want to close more police stations, including
Fairfield, to free up officers for on-the-beat policing, the deputy
commissioner, Mr. Jeff Jarratt, told a parliamentary inquiry into
police resources in Cabramatta yesterday.

More police could patrol the streets if Cabramatta and Fairfield
local area commands were merged, he said.

The inquiry also heard that arrests for some drug crimes had halved
in Cabramatta in the past two years - but this was not a likely
indicator that such crimes had fallen. Rather, police had "eased off"
their work on these offences, the crime statistician Dr Don
Weatherburn said.

Yesterday's police briefing to the Upper House inquiry was opened to
the public after criticism from the Cabramatta community and
Opposition and Greens MPs. Mr. Jarratt was accompanied by his senior
counsel, former ICAC commissioner Mr. Ian Temby, QC.

The Opposition police spokesman, Mr. Andrew Tink, questioned why Mr.
Jarratt needed an external lawyer, estimated to cost many thousands
of dollars a day, when the Police Service had a legal department.
"With budget cuts affecting the level of resources available to
Cabramatta police ... surely the money should be spent on these
things rather than on a QC," he said.

A police spokesman said he would not discuss the cost of employing Mr. Temby.

Mr. Jarratt said he was happy with the level of police resources in
Cabramatta but more officers could be freed up by merging Cabramatta
with Fairfield, about three kilometres away. New technology and the
speed of travel made this possible, he said.

Plans to close seven stations in the eastern suburbs are already
being examined.

"It is not beyond possibility, if that trial is successful, and we
suspect it will be ... that we would then apply that principle more
widely."

But police, local communities and MPs have opposed the closure of
stations in the city's east.

A spokesman for the Police Minister, Mr. Whelan, rejected plans for
further closures. "There is absolutely no plan to do anything other
than consider what's being looked at City East."

Dr Weatherburn said drug enforcement for the possession of cannabis
or narcotics, or dealing of narcotics, had fallen by between 44 and
52 per cent in Cabramatta in the past two years - compared with
little or no change statewide.

"The least plausible explanation is that drug use and drug dealing in
Cabramatta are declining," he said.