KEY POINTS:
As tens of thousands of eager shoppers take advantage of Sylvia Park's Boxing Day sales, Sergeant Harry Henderson and his boys in blue will be out in force to make sure everything goes smoothly.
The police staff are a permanent feature at Sylvia Park - not because it
has a soaring crime rate, but because of the deterrence factor the officers bring to the busy mall.
With Boxing Day sales expected to draw crowds of up to 70,000, it is hoped police walking the mall beat will bring an added sense of security for both retailers and bargain hunters.
The idea of having a group of officers based at a mall was pitched during the planning stage and Mr Henderson said police jumped at the opportunity - for two reasons.
The first was its central location to the area his unit patrols.
The second was the increased public profile, which leads to less crime.
Like any shopping mall, theft from parked cars or stores can be a major problem, especially when it's busy, but Mr Henderson believes those problems are reduced at Sylvia Park thanks to the strong police presence.
While the officers aren't there to solely walk the beat, they are able to get out for a walk whenever they have some downtime - something that wouldn't be so easy if they were based elsewhere.
Being based at the mall also means a quicker response.
For example, a person was recently seen stealing from a shop by a store owner who got a good description.
Mall security was able to locate the person getting into a car and take details of the registration plate which was passed to police in the neighbouring office.
Mr Henderson said his unit was able to trace that registration to a house in which they found hundreds of dollars of stolen property.
If his team weren't based at the mall, security would have had to report the theft to the local police station where the job would have been handed to the local CIB who would have been unlikely to be able to deal with it that day.
Mr Henderson said the police unit works closely with mall security who are usually the first response when something happens.
Sylvia Park management said the mall had become very busy since its opening this year.
Having the police based there not only provided officers with a central location from which to service the wider community, but also had the added bonus of acting as a crime prevention measure.
