Leading Senior Constable Leigh moved to Greater Shepparton from New Zealand at an early age. After a long career policing in Melbourne is excited about moving back to his adopted home where he can see the results of country policing.
Video transcript
So the power of regional policing in particular is you actually get to know your community well and I think that's really important.
I could do my work in Melbourne, and do my policing, but not really knowing the depths of my community.
Here you get to really know community. You get that real sense of closeness in country policing.
You can really sense that if you do make a difference, that you see the difference that you make.
My role is to working with the CALD communities, the culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and what that entails really is to get out there and build trust and rapport and really extend the blue hand of friendship.
So my role week to week would encompass getting out to schools, getting out to places of faith, working with some of our multicultural leaders.
So along with that is understanding that some of these people come from quite traumatic places, and as police officers, it's about just saying to our local communities that we're actually here to help and support you.
The more you do that and the more that people trust you and get to know your face, the better.
I'm out there being proactive and saying ‘This is who I am’, and then ultimately people do come into the police station, they do phone you.
If you can make a difference with one person in whatever way, if you can refer a person from a community in a certain direction and make life a touch easier for them, that's important.
I really enjoy what I do, and feel very fortunate to have this role.
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