Station under protection

SPRINGVALE Railway Station now has protective services officers (PSOs) on patrol every night from 6pm until after the last train.
They started patrolling on Tuesday 9 April just over a year after the first PSOs were deployed.
“PSOs are making a difference to public safety through their work in calming threatening situations and neutralising conflict,” Police Minister Kim Wells said.
“They are making the community feel safer through the deterrent effect that their presence brings.”
On 18 February the Star reported that crime had dropped in the Dandenong Railway Station precinct since an action plan for the area’s launch a year earlier.
The council’s community services director Mark Doubleday said there’d been a marked difference in property damage, theft and assault rates and that PSOs had made a big difference since their deployment in May.
“Since the introduction of the Protective Services Officers (PSOs) there have been no assaults at the railway station,” he said.