Does The Malaysian IGP and Deputy IGP Have The Guts?

Sir Ken Jones (above right) at the announcement last week of Victoria Police's new hierarchy, pictured with Deputy Commissioner Ken Lay (centre) and Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe (left).

HE'S not just any ordinary copper. He's a sir. As in Sir Ken, knighted for services to the British police. And Victoria Police's new top-level recruit is, unlike many of his peers, not afraid to speak his mind.

Ken Jones, the state's new Deputy Commissioner for crime, believes the police force must be independent of politics.

"The minute policing becomes political," he says, "the public lose confidence in it." In the job he is leaving — head of the British Association of Chief Police Officers — he won few friends when he defended police after April's G20 protests in London.

Despite a public outcry over police tactics, and the death of a man, Ian Tomlinson, after being pushed to the ground by an officer, Sir Ken said members had, in the majority, had a "proportionate" response to the event. It is an opinion he sticks by.

"There are some (police officers) who misbehaved because they were under tremendous stress — that's no excuse, and they will be dealt with … and are entitled to due process … But the vast majority did a great job," he told The Sunday Age in an interview last week.

He may like to speak his mind and shun the interference of politicians, but already Sir Ken appears familiar with Victoria's political script when it comes to law and order. His attitude to an independent commission against crime and corruption — an idea repeatedly rejected by the Brumby Government — is a case in point.

Even though Sir Ken, 56, worked as an investigator for Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption, he does not think Victoria needs a similar body. Having looked at the Ombudsman's office, the Office of Police Integrity and the force's ethical standards department, he says: "I have to say that they contain many of the features you would find in a crime commission. My view is that we've got what we need."

It was a response that could have come out of Premier John Brumby's media unit, yet Sir Ken adds: "That's a very quick judgement and I need more time. But if we need something more, (Chief Commissioner) Simon (Overland) as well as me and the others would be very quick to say it."

As well as tackling corruption in Hong Kong, Sir Ken has also monitored elections in Zimbabwe, worked in Canada and the United States, headed up the 6000-strong Sussex Police force and was a contender to be London's police commissioner. Heading up the Association of Chief Police Officers, the 38-year police veteran was responsible for developing British capacity to fight terrorism and co-ordinated strategic responses to events such as civil emergencies.

All of this begs the question: why come halfway around the world to be a deputy commissioner in the Victorian police force?

The thing is, Sir Ken tried to, as he says, "nick" the chief commissioner's job from Overland. He now concedes that Overland was "the best fit — but I had to have a crack".

Also, his contract at the association was ending. He and his wife, Kaye — they have a 21-year-old daughter — were keen to live somewhere outside Britain. "For us, the dream was always to come and live here (in Australia) and live in this city as well. So for us everything just came together at the right time."

The British policeman was also attracted to Overland's attitude to policing: a willingness to try new things. "This is a progressive, open organisation," he says of the Victoria Police. "And it has to be, frankly. You can't continue to do things the way you always have done, or you will get what you've always got.

"I think people are moving through such change — a change probably more fundamental than the industrial and agricultural revolutions. I think the information age that we are moving (through) is so fundamental, if organisations like policing aren't open and up-to-date on that, we will let people down."

Yet Sir Ken is a mix of the old and the new. He's quite the traditionalist in many senses. He believes the force's values and integrity must be immutable and that policing is, at its heart, about servicing the community's needs, about safe neighbourhoods. It's also about uniforms and the "look and feel" of policing, about "always being there for people 24-seven, 365 days a year".

In 2007, Sir Ken called on Britain's National Health Service to prescribe heroin as a way of reducing crime and overdoses, claiming a hardcore of drug users committed crime to feed their addiction. "We have to find a way of dealing with them, and licensed prescription is definitely something we should be thinking about," he said.

However, he told The Sunday Age he opposes legalising any drugs. "We already have two legalised narcotics — alcohol and tobacco — and as a parent I don't see why children should be exposed to any other legal narcotic. It's a slippery slope."

In Sussex he was appointed chief constable "to make a difference" in a force that had been beset by problems, according to John Godfrey, chief executive of the regional police. The brief was "to raise morale within the police force, to increase public confidence in policing in Sussex and to improve the performance of the police force", Godfrey said. "He really did fulfil all our expectations."

He initiated "force performance meetings", a monthly event at which officers and police commanders were held to account in front of their peers. Godfrey says the meetings had a galvanising effect and produced solid improvements, which were noted in the community and were a direct result of what Sir Ken describes as his style of "intrusive management". As Godfrey says: "You knew when Ken was about. He put a bit of stick about the force when it was needed."

Sir Ken, who rides a Harley-Davidson — "that sounds a bit of a cliche, I know" — and is a big cricket fan, does not want Victorians to think he will arrive with all the answers to solve crime. Alcohol-fuelled violence, for example, is a problem seen across many big cities and needs to be tackled by police, government, planning and liquor licensing authorities and the venues. "Expecting just the cops to pick up the negative costs of a poorly regulated, profit-hungry international business is probably not a good idea. You need a sophisticated approach."

He says although a more visible police presence is one crime-fighting tool, relying on it alone will bring failure. "There are a whole host of criminal types that frankly are not deterred by a visible police presence, and there are a lot more that are." He also warns that criminals are moving quickly into identity theft and electronic scamming.

And for all the political football played with crime statistics, his take is that people have lost faith in the numbers and don't believe them unless they are expressed in a very local way — on a neighbourhood level (something Victoria Police has recently tried to address). "Currently in the UK, people are at a 25-year-low risk of being a victim of crime," he says. "But they don't believe that."

Although he's very measured throughout the Sunday Age interview, he's most animated at the end when talking about the glamorisation of criminals in Victoria. He does not name names, but presumably he is talking about the Underbelly television series on Melbourne's gangland wars.

"I think it is totally wrong … These are people, frankly, who are nasty, evil, vile people, whose morals corrode and undermine the good people of Victoria … I want the media to celebrate people who are developing cures for cancer or doing brave, wonderful things — not these people."