Donald, I beg you, I’m on my knees pleading, my hands clasped in front of me in supplication: give this loser the arse: get rid of Rubio.

Steve Price in the Hun:

Fourteen months ago, at the end of 2023, I wrote in these pages that I thought Victorians were being failed by the two most powerful people in the state.

My targets were the newly minted Premier Jacinta Allan and her Chief Commissioner of Police Shane Patton.

Fast forward to February 2025 and nothing has changed – we are still being failed. How then, as reported by the Herald Sun this week, is Commissioner Patton being lined up for a new five-year well-paid contract?

It simply beggars’ belief.

After that 2023 column, which I am told the police chief took great umbrage at, the Herald Sun sought a face to face interview between myself and the police chief. It took six months to organise, and we published the results of that sit-down in May 2024.

In hindsight – and this is hard for me to confess – I believe I was seduced by Patton’s personality and put offside by the location of the chat: Patton’s high-rise office at the top of police HQ in Spencer Street in Docklands. We even took a tour of the helipad on the roof that hosts the police helicopter for a series of pictures.

I let myself down – and the readers of this column – and many of you let me know it in the comments section. You were right and I was wrong.

In the months since, Patton has made it clear he wanted the decade-long Labor government to roll over his contract, giving him another go. I made the point back in the original criticism of the commissioner that I thought he was too close to his masters in Spring St, originally Daniel Andrews and now the Premier and his new boss, Allan.

Nothing has changed. No, in fact, policing in this state is horrendously worse. We are in the middle of a suburban crime wave that we have never witnessed before involving repeat home invasions, armed and bailed teenagers wearing masks and terrifying people in the middle of the night. And this bloke thinks he should be rewarded with another quarter of a million dollars a year for another five years.

Spare me.

Communities across the southeast and eastern suburbs have so little faith in the ability of police to protect them they are hiring private security firms to patrol their streets at night. In areas around Middle and Albert Park, on-street parking has led to criminals cherry- picking luxury vehicles to remove expensive wheels and even doors on a steal-to-order parts crime spree.

And since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel – murdering men, women and children in the most horrific way and taking hundreds of hostages – Victoria Police have under Patton’s command allowed our city every Sunday to be taken over by Palestinian protesters, many carrying and chanting anti-Semitic slogans. These city-disrupting protest marches are allowed week after week with police unwilling to intervene.

Anti-Semitism has reached dangerous new levels culminating in the destruction of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea back in December. It was classified as a terrorist attack and as of now there have been no arrests.

Add to that the terrifying suburban teenage crime wave, carjackings and apparent inability to stem the use of bladed weapons including machetes, plus the dangerous baiting of police in high-speed car chases. As this has unfolded with dire consequences – including the death of a man who intervened – the force has been crippled by an inability to land a pay deal until last week – and that is now in doubt with talk of a no confidence motion aimed at Patton.

Police vehicles had been smothered in industrial action graffiti and the morale of thousands of police has collapsed, with hundreds quitting.

We are told, and the numbers are fluid, but there are claims of 800 vacancies at Vic Pol and an estimated 900 police on sick leave. The industrial action lasted two years and will cost taxpayers $456 million – all under Shane Patton who wants five more years.

Going further back to the dark days of Covid and under Commissioner Patton’s command – and I asked him about this – Victoria Police were ordered to fire on ordinary Melburnians protesting Dan Andrews’ Covid lockdowns. Pepper spray and rubber bullets were used and we even had people urging non-compliance to vaccines handcuffed in their own homes.

Then, back in 2023, we had up to 43 police stations cut down on their opening hours with 23 of them locking their doors after dark and on weekends and public holidays with the excuse being that would allow a freeing up of police to the front line. Rubbish. In country Victoria it gets worse and as reported at the time, places like Portland in the west didn’t have a police station within 100km.

At that Q&A meeting we had, the Commissioner laughed at the suggestion I had made that he was seen by the wider public as being too woke. This was after he turned up at the Yoorook Truth Telling Commission set up by the Andrews government. He admitted to this group that he agreed that the police uniform represented a symbol of fear for some indigenous Victorians.

He went further and apologised unreservedly – his word – for past and present actions of the force that inflicted trauma on first nations people.

Woke? Not much, he’s not!

Look, face to face Shane presents as a good bloke and someone you’d be happy to have a beer with. You also get the impression that he would much rather be the tough copper he probably was as a junior in uniform or as a detective chasing down violent criminals.

His first five years, though, and potentially his 10 years running the force, has in my view seen him become politically too close to Labor to keep his job at the top.

Sadly, Victoria hasn’t had a great run with our top cops, including the failures of people like Christine Nixon during Black Saturday and Simon Overland and his Lawyer X involvement.

Victoria badly needs a tough, politically independent old school police chief to tackle the mess we are in.

I don’t believe that person is Shane Patton.

Hard to refute any of these issues that Price brings up.

BREAKING: Japan pledges $1 TRILLION investment in the US

After President Donald Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for a meeting on Friday, the official pledged an investment of $1 trillion into the United States. Trump also announced that the US will start a joint venture with Japan surrounding oil and gas in Alaska.

Mmmyes if you or I, kind reader, set fire to, I don’t know let’s say a mosque, we would be languishing in the clink poste haste. Daily Telegraph on the horse has bolted noos:

Premier Chris Minns has ­ordered a review into why a high-profile anti-Semitic arsonist was not prosecuted in a court that could issue a harsher sentence than the 10-month minimum he received.

Mr Minns took the step after being pressured by The Saturday Telegraph to explain why prosecutors kept the case of Guy Finnegan – who set fire to Bondi’s Curly Lewis ­brewery – in the Local Court where maximum sentences are capped at two years.

Finnegan was charged with an offence that carries a maximum 11-year sentence and prosecutors could have taken his case to the District Court, which has no sentence cap.

The Telegraph’s revelation came two weeks after Minns publicly criticised Finnegan’s sentence, which he said sent the “wrong message” to deter the wave of anti-Semitic hate crimes escalating at an alarming level in Sydney.

“I (have) sought a review as to why it was not referred to the District Court,” Mr Minns said in answer to The Saturday Telegraphs’ questions.

“I want to reassure the ­community that we will be watching closely,” he said. “If we need to do more to strengthen laws, we will.”

Mr Minns has also asked the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sally Dowling SC, to examine the possible appeal of Finnegan’s sentence on the grounds it was too lenient.

It is understood police prosecutors requested Ms Dowling’s office to elevate the prosecution of Finnegan to the District Court but were told it didn’t meet the legal agency’s threshold under its guidelines.

A spokeswoman for Ms Dowling did not respond to questions about whether ­Finnegan’s matter was referred to her office.

NSW Police also did not answer questions about whether its police prosecutors referred the matter to Ms Dowling’s ­office.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said he was disappointed about the move to leave the case in the Local Court and said the strongest possible sentencing was needed to deter further attacks.

“Prosecutors need to do everything in their power to pursue long custodial sentences for these crimes,” Mr Ryvchin said.

“Unless justice is delivered swiftly and forcefully, loss of homes and businesses to targeted arson attacks will eventually lead to loss of life.”

A high-profile Sydney criminal lawyer, who asked not to be named, said,

“He (Finnegan) wouldn’t have gotten the full 11 years. But it would have opened up the potential for him to have gotten a heavier sentence than 10 months.”

Finnegan was arrested the day after the October 17 fire and charged with one count of destroying property worth more than $5000 by fire in the company of another person.

Finnegan pleaded guilty to the arson attack and nine other unrelated offences, including domestic violence, fraud, theft, larceny and drug possession.

In Sutherland Local Court on January 21, Magistrate Danielle Mansour sentenced Finnegan to a minimum 10 month jail sentence with an 18-month maximum as an aggregate for all the offences.

Mr Minns slammed the sentence as too lenient and said prosecutors were appealing to send a stronger message to deter future attacks.

“We need to send a strong, unambiguous message that you will face the full force of the law and the book will be thrown at (you),” he said.

Except when the book isn’t thrown Mr Minns.
This melds into the earlier Price article. Useless amoebae at the highest levels of policing and indeed Sally Downing who simply refuse to enforce laws and sentencing that are already on the books.