Police Beat: The Emotional Power of Music in Police Work By Simon ...

Musicians masquerading as police officers did not cause any further problems for the department until 1974, when the instrumentation of the band was changed from brass to military, bringing it into line with other Australian military bands. This enabled band members to perform a more diverse range of musics and so appeal to wider audiences. The change in instrumentation required the addition of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bass clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, French horns, bassoons, electric and bass guitars and an acoustic bass to the existing brass line-up. Musicians had to be sourced externally to fill the new positions due to a lack of suitably qualified personnel within the department. This presented a problem for the department, which was bound by the Police Act to provide only sworn police officers with uniforms. Accordingly, the police department required all incoming band staff to become sworn officers and to undertake police training, qualifying them for particular policing duties. Since 1974, however, the police-training requirement has become increasingly redundant, mainly because working time is increasingly accounted for by specific rehearsal and performance commitments and tasks related to these core activities, such as travelling to and from performances in remote areas, setting up and packing up performance spaces, rehearsing, instrument maintenance and so on. Currently employed band members undergo no police training and regard themselves as professional musicians and vehemently not as police officers. A position in the Grayville police band is one of two full-time musical jobs in the state, the other being in the notoriously difficult-to-enter Grayville Symphony Orchestra.

Despite the collective self-classification to the contrary, band members are regarded by the department as police officers although they are not considered operational officers by the department because they are untrained in ‘General Duties’ police work. General Duties police work is that undertaken by general duties and ‘patrol’ officers who, according to the Patrol Member Position Information Document, act to ‘assist the preservation of law and order and the prevention and detection of crime within the Division’. The band branch belongs to the Community Programs Support Branch (CPSB) of the department, which in turn belongs to the larger Operations Support Service.⁸