Police patrols become more buzz than fuzz
THEIR intolerable noise has them denounced as the leaf blowers of the sea but NSW police will rely on a squadron of jet-skis to patrol Sydney’s waterways this summer.
Ten of the vessels will form the basis of the newly created marine enforcement team, unveiled by the Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, yesterday.
Conducting random breath tests, compliance checks and search and rescues, the squad will patrol Sydney Harbour as well as Broken Bay and Botany Bay in the same way police cars roam residential streets and highways.
”For some, there is no better day out than a good day out on the harbour or a good day out on the bay,” Mr Scipione said. ”But that can be spoilt at a minute’s notice with hooligans that are out there, people that are drinking and driving their boats, people that are out there speeding.
”This team will be about making sure that people comply with the [law], they will be involved in breath testing, they will be doing speed enforcement. All of the things we do on our roads, they will be doing on the water.”
The police have wanted to deploy a marine enforcement team for years but have not had the vessels to do so. The 10 new Sea-Doo RXT aS 260 jet-skis are capable of reaching speeds of up to 115 km/h.
With the new vessels at their disposal, officers aim carry out an unprecedented number of random breath tests this summer. The marine area command want to carry out ”well over 13,000” this year, up from around 12,000 last year.
”The good thing about this job is most people are happy to see us, except if they have been drinking,” the marine area commander, Detective Superintendent Mark Hutchings, said. ”Luckily enough, we don’t get a lot of instances like that. We’ve seen a reduction in the number of people we have been arresting and we want to see this trend continue.”
The benefit of jet-skis, which are prohibited from being ridden on Sydney Harbour by the public, are that they are ”flexible, mobile and fast”, Superintendent Hutchings said. Police will mainly use them during the day because of safety concerns at night.
Along with Sydney waterways, the jet-skis will also be used in Newcastle and Port Stephens during the boating season and can be towed by the police’s ocean patrol vessel Nemesis up and down the coast if required.
