Senior Sergeant Harris said members were at Horsham for varying lengths of time, from training to ongoing positions, and were of different ages and career stages.
“We’ve got a good mix at the moment – youngsters, locals, metro – from right at the beginning from the academy, and we’ve also had some senior constables who have left VicPol and they’ve come back to Horsham,” he said.
PUZZLES: Play our online puzzles here, featuring a daily quiz, Wordy, Sudoku and crosswords.
“It’s good to have the youngsters out and about, and also there’s locals as well, which is good – they know their way around.
“We cover quite a large area here, across to Dimboola, Kaniva and Nhill, and there are some strange town names, and they’ll just go, ‘oh yeah, I know where that is, I’ll start heading there’.”
Senior Sergeant Harris said while there were advantages in people returning to their home areas to police, there were also downfalls.
“A lot of people know the members, whether they’re family or old classmates, which is good, but unfortunately you can end up arresting people that you went to school with, or you know who they are,” he said. Senior Sergeant Harris said he planned to deploy the new members to the area’s roads.
“The plan is to have them out on the road, obviously keeping the town safe, but we also have a big focus on road trauma at the moment,” he said.
“There have been a lot of fatalities in the past 12 to 18 months.”
Constable Emerson Spriggs said he joined Victoria Police after working in a timber yard, and had been in the job for about a month.
“I come from Wallan. I lived there for about five years, and I just needed a change of pace,” he said.
“I wanted to do something more interesting, a bit more fast-paced and something where you get a little bit of behind-the-scenes.
“They say it’s a front-row ticket to the best show on earth – and it’s true.”
– Bronwyn Hastings
The entire November 12, 2025 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!
