Karen Webb, the NSW Police Commissioner who spun her own Webb

The NSW public often have an ambivalent relationship with NSW Police that drifts from admiration to ingratitude. While footage of Inspector Amy Scott running towards danger at Bondi Junction reminds us of the debt we owe, NSW police commissioners can walk a thankless road.

The job involves politics as well as policing. And the brutal reality for Police Commissioner Karen Webb is that she proved to be a lousy politician.

She is set to resign after just three years in the post, leaving in September after recently rejecting claims of an early retirement.

Webb capped a 34-year police career after becoming the first woman appointed to the role. Boorowa-born, she was sworn-in in February 2022 in her home town, a groundbreaking choice for NSW governments where women have been generally underrepresented. Past commissioners had to battle crime waves or terrorism, but Webb arrived at a relatively peaceful period, with crime rates at their lowest for decades.

She used her first press conference to highlight her interest in crimes such as “child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence” that required a different kind of policing, where community trust was crucial. She helped launch a new online sexual assault reporting system, allowing victims to report incidents anonymously, and announced an independent review targeting serial sexual offenders within the force.

Her crowning achievement could well be scoring a historic pay rise for officers. The force was awarded a 19 per cent base pay increase over four years, helping recruit and retain officers. The reforms also allowed officers to job-share, work part-time and have flexible work arrangements.

Loading

But a ham-fisted attempt at media manipulation in May 2023, when she approved a 71-word press release that covered up the use of a Taser in the fatal stunning of a 95-year-old Cooma aged care resident suffering from dementia, soured her image. The following February, she stalled for a week after the murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies by serving police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon before fronting the media, a response that fitted some perceptions NSW Police were stonewalling when it came to acknowledging the hostility experienced by LGBTQ people as they investigated a four-decade swath of unsolved murders.

She subsequently apologised to victims of gay hate crimes and announced a new taskforce to re-examine hundreds of cold murder cases.