Melané White, Community Diversity Officer with WA Police is keen to connect with the LGBTIQ community in WA. Melané started in the Indigenous and Community Diversity Unit with WA Police back in July last year, and may be familiar as one of the friendly faces from the police stall at Pride Fairday 2011. The Unit has responsibility for LGBTIQ specific police policies and Melané works on these.
Melané is especially passionate about ensuring that the LGBTIQ and WA Police work together as she explained to OUTinPerth,
‘My key focus is community engagement so going out to the various LGBTIQ community groups, sitting down and having conversations with them essentially working out what’s going on in the community
‘You have the right to report crimes against you safely to the police regardless of how you identify – you don’t need to actually disclose how you identify when you go to a police station if you go to a police station and you say ‘I’ve been assaulted’ that’s an assault, full stop. It doesn’t matter where you come from it’s an assault… same with if it’s a sexual assault or any other crime committed against you.
‘People need to make sure they get an Incident Report (IR) number, and then it will be investigated. Later of course if it’s investigated it may go to court then and a person may choose to out themselves or they may be outed in the course of the investigation but at the initial frontline point it is not treated any differently to any other crime to solve.
‘We know from research that crimes are being committed against LGBTIQ people but they are too scared to come out and say something. All people who are on the desk at a police station – customer service officers or police officers – have been trained in diversity issues and they should attend to you as they would any other person
‘If you want something to be reported as a crime you need to report it as that. You don’t just have to just do it at the police station, you can report online at Crime Stoppers – and you can report anonymously. So there are other avenues to report crime that can still leave you anonymous. It is important people have the confidence to report crimes committed against them. If they do not have this confidence, they can contact me and I will direct them to the appropriate person to speak to and support them in doing this.
WA Police understand there are historical factors associated with the law that may impede some of the GLBTI community members from reporting. This is acknowledged and measures to address this are being examined.
‘If people don’t report then no action can be taken.
‘I’m hoping in the next few months to get to each of the community groups separately – get together with them so service users can come along. I want to chat with people about the importance of reporting crime and how safe they are in doing that. I’m really quite passionate about it because for a long time the community has felt unsafe and we need to encourage people to report crimes committed against them.
‘It takes a while to change attitudes on both sides, but lots of work has been done within WA Police to improve outcomes for victims of crime and now I am working towards improving the LGBTIQ community’s confidence in the reporting of crimes.’
For life threatening matters or where urgent assistance is required call
000
To report a non life threatening matter call
131444
Crime Stoppers
1800 333 000
On the Web
http://www.wa.crimestoppers.com.au
To contact Melané ring 9222 1510
or email IndigenousandCommunityDiversityUnitSMAIL@police.wa.gov.au
