A New South Wales (NSW) Police operation targeting the state’s most dangerous domestic violence offenders has turned up illegal firearms and guns, and a corn snake.
Nearly 600 people were charged in the four-day operation, including 139 considered among the state’s most dangerous domestic violence offenders.As well as checking compliance with restraining orders and bail conditions at least 5,000 times, police took out 315 new restraining orders and seized 22 firearms and 40 prohibited weapons.
More than half of the state’s murders are domestic violence-related, senior police said on Sunday.
Police Deputy Commissioner Mal Lanyon said the most dangerous DV offences often display the violence of organised crime figures and the fixation of terrorists.
“NSW Police won’t tolerate it. We will put you before the court (and) we have made it clear there is no place for family and domestic violence offending,” he told reporters.
The operation followed two estranged or former husbands being charged with the murder of Sydney women this month.
During one arrest in the Hunter Valley region, police found a rifle round, cocaine, drug paraphernalia, two phones, testosterone cypionate and a corn snake, which was handed over to the Department of Primary Industries.
A number of alleged offenders tried to flee before being caught including one man who crawled into a roof cavity and onto the roof.
Another runner, allegedly breaching his restraining order near Penrith, leapt a number of fences with the Dog Squad in tow before being hit with sexual touching and assault charges.On average, NSW Police receives a domestic-violence-related call every four minutes and deals with 90 DV-related assaults every day.
During the operation, which ended on Saturday, police engaged with high-risk DV offenders on 1169 occasions.They made 315 applications for Apprehended Domestic Violence Orders (ADVO), served 500 outstanding ADVOs, completed 4,882 ADVO compliance checks, and 1,465 bail compliance checks.
“These figures show this is an epidemic,” Police Minister Yasmin Catley said on Sunday.
“We know domestic and family violence is one of the most under-reported crime types. The police have my full support on this.”It comes as police overhaul their DV response after the auditor-general found training levels and compliance checks varied across the force’s 57 commands.
Changes to be announced will extend from offender management to victim support, and include advice on how police deal with other organisations involved in DV responses.
The police watchdog in June also called for improvements after finding current training, procedures and guidelines weren’t sufficiently instructing officers how to correctly identify the primary aggressor and the primary victim in DV incidents.
