Tasmania Police is today launching a new recruitment campaign to encourage more women to apply to become police officers.

The new campaign comes during Tasmania Police’s ‘100 Years of Women in Policing’ celebratory year.
Themed ‘You got this’, the campaign centres around a new website and short videos of serving police officers telling their stories and encouraging women to project themselves into the role of a police officer.

“The campaign shows confident and competent police officers and is designed to encourage women to ask themselves whether they have the attributes that policing requires,” said Senior Sergeant Brenda Orr.

“As well as Facebook graphics and other online content, a series of video clips provides a glimpse into the world of four police officers, exploring their motivations and thoughts on their work,” she said.
One of those officers is Constable Carly Lovell who is based at Huonville Police Station.
In her video Carly says policing had appealed to her since she was a child and used to watch a neighbour police officer arrive home on his police motorbike.

“There’s something inside you that tells you this is what you’re supposed to be doing,” she said.
Another video features Hobart Sergeant Louise O’Connor who describes her policing colleagues as a family.

“It takes a village to raise a family and I’m very lucky that my village extends to the police service,” she said.

Assistant Commissioner Richard Cowling said: “With our celebratory year of 100 Years of Women in Policing in full swing it’s a very fitting time to be launching this campaign.

“We’re encouraging more women to apply because women are under-represented in the initial application process.

“As a snapshot, in the last three months 60% of applications were from men and 40% from women. We’d really like to see a 50/50 gender split in applications so we’re starting from a level playing field.

“Candidates go on to complete physical, psychological and written testing which ensures that selection onto a training course is absolutely based on merit.

“But we’re never going to achieve a truly representative workforce if we don’t have enough women applying in the first place,” he said.
While the campaign focuses on women, recruitment of course remains open to men.

The final video in the series of four shows a male police officer, Bellerive-based Senior Constable Rob Bessell, telling his experience of a career in policing.

Currently around 32% of Tasmania Police officers are women. The figure has hovered at around 31% for some years.

New Recruitment section of this website: police.tas.gov.au/join-us/