From left: Superintendent Paul Ziebarth – District Officer (DO) Gold Coast District, Principal Steve McLuckie, School Captain Nathan Hui, Acting Senior Constable Dianne McIntyre, School Captain Rebecca Gillingham,Senior Sergeant Ray Vine, Officer in Charge (OIC) Southport Station,Senior Sergeant Paul Jackson, Officer in Charge (OIC) Gold Coast Child Protection Investigation Unit (CPIU)
Gold Coast school students are experiencing the benefits of School-Based Police Officers (SBPO), after the School Based Policing Program (SBPP) was expanded to include Southport State High School and Upper Coomera State College recently.
The School Based Policing Program is a joint initiative of the Queensland Police Service (QPS) and the Department of Education, Training and Employment. This program places an emphasis on community involvement and preventative approaches to crime and seeks to enhance schooling by helping to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for all students.
The SBPO program has run very effectively in a number of Schools across Queensland since 1997 and is an integral part of the Queensland Police Service key objectives of stopping crime, making the community safer and building relationships across the community. The Queensland Police Service is committed to providing more options for the community to communicate with police resulting in relationships that are built and strengthened.
The School Based Police Officer program brings our young people into close contact with police officers so that the police can become part of the school extra-curriculum and is designed to reduce the incidence of crime and victimisation in participating schools. It is also designed to promote positive relationships between police and members of the school community, including the students, parents, citizens, teachers and staff.
Acting Senior Constable Dianne McIntyre is the new School Based Police Officer assigned to the Southport School. Dianne commenced working here at the start of the school year and she is very enthusiastic about her new role as the Southport School Based Police Officer. Dianne has already a number of initiatives and programs that she wants to implement at Southport