Of all the assaults reported to police in 2022-23, 44.3 per cent were family violence-related

These reported acts of violence, which were dominated by assaults (up 14 per cent) and sexual offences (up 8.8 per cent), had been relatively stable across the territory since 2016-17 but spiked in the past financial year from 3662 to 4259, an increase of more than 16 per cent.

Of those reported assault offences, 44.3 per cent were family violence-related.

This has produced a new peak of 934 offences against persons per 100,000 of population in the ACT. The previous highest number seen for these offence types was 894 per 100,000 recorded back in 2018-19.

The latest results were published in the 2022-23 ACT Policing annual report, which is separate to that provided by the Australian Federal Police. All ACT officers belong to the AFP and provide contracted services at an annual cost to the territory of some $204 million.

The data revealed how the past financial year produced a significant ramp-up in workload for the ACT's law and order workforce with more family violence interventions, more intoxicated people taken into custody, and a 10 per cent increase in arrests.

And as the ACT heads toward becoming the first jurisdiction in the country to decriminalise all illicit drugs, it has coincided with a huge plunge in police drug seizures, down 40 per cent on 2021-22.

Family violence incidents have taken a sharper focus in the past reporting period, requiring a 7.6 per cent increase in police attendance.

It was no surprise, too, to find that the police Family Violence Unit has been quietly working cases where offenders keep intimidating their victims from behind bars at Canberra's jail. In the past few years, monitoring by ACT Corrections has resulted in police levelling five charges of using a carriage service to threaten serious harm, and four of threaten to kill.

Property offences in the ACT remained on a sharp decline in 2022-23, falling 13.5 per cent from the previous reporting year.

During 2021-22, the rate of stolen cars had a huge upsurge in the territory to the point where the Chief Police Officer, Neil Gaughan described the ACT as the motor vehicle theft capital of the country.

Keenly aware that the main perpetrators were repeat offenders, the police rolled out Operation Toric in August which rotated the best young investigators through a targeted operational team specifically hunting down recidivist offenders. This has drawn a sharp line through the ACT's car theft rate, cutting it by almost 25 per cent in the latest reporting year.

As at June 30 this year, Operation Toric had netted 287 apprehensions and 704 charges, mostly related to drug driving, driving while disqualified, and driving a stolen vehicle. Many of these offenders were already subject to existing court-imposed orders and other conditions at the time of their arrest - 118 were on bail and 58 were subject to good behaviour obligations.

Household burglaries dropped 8.2 per cent, but commercial burglaries rose 5.4 per cent.

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Slow response times to non life-threatening incidents remains an ongoing problem for local police as a result of historically low staffing numbers for the population size of Canberra compared with other states and territories. A new online reporting tool for low-level crime was triggered in June this year and that is expected to ease this issue.

The biggest single infrastructure investment for police in the past year was the relocation of the Traffic Operations Centre from the leaky old premises in Lathlain St Belconnen to a huge new warehouse in Hume, at a cost of $11.5 million.

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