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Source: Close Up
A proposal to ban people with tattoos from joining the NSW police force is absurd, the Australian state opposition says.
Under a proposal being drafted for Australian Commissioner Andrew Scipione, prospective police recruits with tattoos would be knocked back and current officers with tattoos would have to conceal them.
Assistant police commissioner Michael Corboy, one of the authors of the proposal, said the move was about professionalism and presenting the right look to the community.
"Does the community want someone knocking on their door with a Mike Tyson tattoo on their face or neck? I don't think so," he told The Sydney Morning Herald.
But Australian opposition leader John Robertson said police should be concentrating on more important issues.
"It's just absurd that the government's focused on something like that rather than actually getting more police on the ground to deal with issues like drive-by shootings," he told Macquarie Radio.
A spokesman for the NSW Police Association said the union was yet to see the proposal.
But he said the association did not have any major objections so long as the proposal did not affect existing officers or those who had tattoos for cultural reasons.
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