The Northern Grampians Police Service Area covers the three Local Government areas of Ararat Rural City, Northern Grampians Shire and Yarriambiack Shire. The local population is just over 30,000 people and the area is bigger than exactly 100 countries/principalities on earth. It may surprise people to discover that about 100 police (stationed in 15 police stations) provide all aspects of policing service to the community in this vast area.

Maintaining an effective policing service in those circumstances certainly presents its challenges, but those challenges are not insurmountable. Rapid improvement in technology, changes to legislation, and the roll-out of dedicated Family Violence detectives have all assisted local police to do their jobs more effectively. However, it is the improvements we have made in our collection and collation of information and intelligence that has delivered the biggest positive impact on our mission to ensure community safety.

By proactively targeting our policing responses to areas of identified need we are preventing crimes and road trauma from occurring. By working with key community stakeholders we are involved in programs designed to divert potential offenders towards more productive behaviour. By engaging with other government agencies and sharing information we are intervening earlier in family violence situations and preventing the escalation of violence against the vulnerable.

However, the information and intelligence that drives these policing approaches does not come out of thin air. If we don’t know something we cannot possibly act on it – which makes the 30,000 pairs of eyes and ears belonging to the community our biggest asset. It is the community who know when something suspicious is occurring on their street or someone different is hanging around.

It is the community who look at CCTV footage we release on our ‘Eyewatch - Northern Grampians Police Service Area’ Facebook page and immediately know ‘who done it’.

It is the community that knows that someone is regularly driving home after having too many drinks and endangering everyone in their path.

There are many avenues for the community to engage with police including: anonymously via Crimestoppers (1800 333 000 or online); our facebook page (see above); or by simply dropping into your local police station to tell us what you know.  By working together we can continue to ensure that the Northern Grampians Police Service Area remains a safe place to live, work and play.