Katarina Carroll isn't a bad top cop. She isn't a bad person. She has done a most satisfactory job as Queensland police commissioner.
She has brought to the position some degree of social awareness, empathy, salt of the earth attitude and personal touch which none of her "male predecessors" either had or displayed to the general public.
Which sadly is why the police commissioner increasingly seems to be "out of place" in an organisation which remains maligned by a culture of egocentrics, misogyny, sexism and power trips, an organisation forever run exclusively by authoritarian men who simply don't want to answer to a women.
That's the Queensland Police Service in a nutshell. That's Katarina Carroll's dilemma. She is a woman.
It was always going to be mission impossible for any female police commissioner in Queensland to suddenly eradicate decades of institutionalised alpha male ideology and excesses within the entire police service.
No doubt, a number of senior police figures, all the way up to superintendent level, want Katarina Carroll gone.
Weak men who can't handle having a woman in charge of them. Weak men who don't want cultural change within the QPS which commisioner Carroll is championing for because then "they" would have to change.
Commissioner Carroll deserves another tenure as top cop. She hasn't been brilliant or groundbreaking, but she hasn't been a failure either.
She at least deserves one more stint, but if some powerful men with badges and stripes get their way, she won't get it.
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