Behind the badge: Senior Sergeant Jakki Poustie

Senior Sergeant Jakki Poustie

Graduated: 2021

Work unit: North West Metro Division 5 Tasking and Coordination

You started your policing career interstate at Queensland Police. What made you want to get into the job?

My older brother joined the police force in 1988 when I was 11 years old, and I thought that was just amazing. From that day on, I always wanted to join the police. As I got older, I went off to university to study commerce which I found pretty boring, then onto an admin job while I applied for the police force. I got in to Queensland Police as a 23-year-old in 2000 at the Townsville campus of the Academy.

What kinds of areas did you work in during your 18-year policing career in Queensland?

I spent a lot of my career in Far North Queensland, starting in Cairns and eventually working in lots of smaller communities further north.

Early in my career, my late husband and I decided to do some remote policing and we were sent to Kowanyama, an Aboriginal community that literally becomes an island during the wet season, which was pretty awesome. We also spent time in other amazing and beautiful parts of the country that were completely untouched, including Thursday Island, Cooktown and Normanton.

In those smaller communities we saw a lot of family violence, and that’s where I developed a real interest in family violence and how to prevent it.

I later became the District Domestic Violence Coordinator in the Mount Isa district, which was a holistic role looking at partnering with our communities and stakeholders to make an impact on family violence. I spent some time as a specialist family violence prosecutor, then as a full-time prosecutor more generally, before moving to what’s now the Family Violence Command in Brisbane and becoming a subject matter expert in family violence for Queensland Police.

How did the opportunity to join Victoria Police come up?

A friend of mine asked me if we could grab a coffee to talk about a job interview he had coming up with Victoria Police’s Family Violence Command, because I had that family violence background in Queensland. Over the years in that space, I’d developed a good relationship with Rosie Batty and had a really good understanding of the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence, so when my friend got the job and moved down here and we’d chat about his work, it definitely entered my mind.

I had always wanted to join Victoria Police and actually started my application a couple of years prior before putting it on hold when my husband passed away. But after that, my friend who moved down here said there were heaps of jobs at Victoria Police and that I should apply for one. I thought, why not, what have I got to lose? So, I got the first job I applied for which was a Victorian Public Service (VPS) role in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse team.

I pretty quickly realised that I missed policing, so I got in touch with the recruitment team to reactivate my application and start the process again. I worked as an Executive Advisor to the Assistant Commissioner of North West Metro Region while I was going through the application process and was eventually accepted into the Academy in 2020.

What was the process of transitioning from a VPS employee to a police officer like?

As soon as I started back in policing, it felt like coming home.

The application process was lengthy but once I got in, I only had to do 20 weeks out of the then-32-week Academy program because of my 18 years of experience in Queensland. I was sworn in as a constable and then a couple of months later when I marched out of the Academy in January 2021, I was a leading senior constable which was amazing. I then made it my mission to do two years in on the van in general duties so I could really learn how to do things the Victoria Police way.

Where has your career in Victoria Police taken you so far?

I initially started at Preston Police Station where I stayed for a couple of years before moving to Northcote, which I really loved. I ended up doing some upgrading at Northcote as a sergeant before heading out to Epping, which was probably the furthest station in Melbourne from my house, but I really enjoyed it there. I had a great offsider and was able to take a bit of ownership of things out there which was great.

After that, I applied for a senior sergeant role in North West Metro Division 5 Tasking & Coordination (T&C), which is where I am now.

Is there a particular job or outcome from your decades of policing that you're especially proud of?

Probably the most remarkable job I ever attended was a traffic crash on a remote road, about a 2-hour drive from the police station in Normanton. It was a single vehicle rollover, and the driver was a young German tourist who had become trapped in a very rolled up position and, as a result, had injured his spine. We arrived and he was still in situ and very scared.

I remember him telling me that he couldn’t feel his legs and I sat down with him, held his hand and told him we would get him out and off to Brisbane in no time. The whole job lasted about 10 hours, and the road had to be cleared and graded so that the Royal Flying Doctor Service could land and extract him very carefully from the vehicle and take off again back to Brisbane.

A few months later, he sent me a photo of him standing (with a cane), thanking me for the time I spent with him on the roadside. He eventually got back to Germany after spending some months in the spinal unit at a hospital in Brisbane and was back on his feet, on the road to a full recovery.

Tell us a bit about your current role.

To be honest, I didn’t know much about T&C, but I’ve learned a lot since starting here in November last year. I oversee our division’s intelligence unit and planning unit which is made up of about 27 staff.

In simple terms, we look at all of the crime occurring in the division from an intelligence perspective, identifying any trends and themes to feed out to our members, and then using that intelligence to inform our tasking of members and planning for special events and operations. It’s a very interesting job.

You've had the opportunity to work in several different aspects of policing both in Queensland and Victoria - but is there anything you'd like to try that you haven't yet?

I would really love to try either the Water Police, Air Wing or Mounted Branch.

To be fair, I am not a fan of flying, but I just love how the Air Wing is our eye in the sky. As a frontline supervisor, they are so great to work with and often allow us to resolve incidents quickly and safely.

I also like the water, but maybe only the sheltered water, and warmer water… so I guess the Water Police is out too! But I do love horses and can ride, so maybe I could get a gig at Mounted Branch someday.

To find out more visit police careers.

Editorial Cassandra Stanghi
Photography Lane Mihaljevic

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