As first revealed by InDaily last week, the Police Association has called for all officers stood down because they haven’t had the COVID jab, or deployed for COVID-related duties, to be returned to frontline policing.

Union boss Mark Carroll has also suggested unvaccinated officers could at least perform administrative roles from home, declaring the situation had led to a “full-blown staffing crisis”.

Carroll said a combination of vaccination mandates, emergency quarantine directions and redeployment to “COVID-related duties” taking hundreds of officers off the frontline at the height of the Omicron outbreak last month undermined police capacity to “wield effective control over crime”.

He also complained that the health advice underpinning the mandate had not been provided to the union, despite requests.

But Acting Police Commissioner Linda Williams hit back this week, telling reporters: “We have a dual responsibility to keep the community safe and to maintain the safety of our members.”

She said while “only about 70 police officers” remain unvaccinated under the mandate, “perhaps if we’d provided that option to do duties at home that number would rise”.

“They’re not able to come to work at the present time – it is a balancing act,” she said.

“We have an obligation to provide a service to the community, to have people in the workplace able to do the job.”

Williams suggested a legal push for a judicial review of mandates across the health, education and policing sectors – launched in December – was the reason specific advice underpinning the police direction had not been released.

“You may be aware there is a legal challenge at the present time… and that’s the appropriate area that the information should be provided,” she said, adding that the union had been “given the advice as to why the State Coordinator [Police Commissioner Grant Stevens] has made that determination”.

Williams says the mandate is not impacting frontline policing “ at the present time because we’ve been able to scale back our COVID response”.

“We no longer deploy police at the borders or Adelaide airport, we’ve increased the number of protective security officers who police the medi-hotels [and] we’ve recruited extra police officers… so we’re in a really good position now with our staffing,” she said.

However, she conceded that “at one point we actually stopped annual leave”, which remained capped at 14 per cent of the workforce, and said staffing continued to be “monitored on a daily basis”.

But in a Facebook post yesterday afternoon, Carroll escalated the stoush, saying claims about the impact of staffing shortages “has come directly from police officers at the coalface”.

“Over the weekend, our members submitted a hazard report from a Southern District patrol base that showed just five officers were available for what should have been a 12-person shift,” he said.

“Other members also advised us last Saturday that more than 50 calls for police assistance were put on hold, going unanswered, in the Western District.”

Carroll said Williams’ claim that allowing unvaccinated officers to work in administrative roles could have dissuaded members getting jabbed was “at odds with the four specific purposes set out in the Direction 2021”, which stipulates the mandate is to maintain the provision of police services, minimise service disruption due to the spread of the virus and reduce the risk of spread to the broader community.

“This particular sentiment from the deputy commissioner is not highlighted anywhere in the direction,” he said.

“It is, in fact, pure speculation, not something written in the purposes of the direction.

“When you actually read the purposes of the direction, it is clear that it has largely failed.

“It is not just about the number of members stood down owing to mandatory vaccinations – it is also about the policies which have caused hundreds of fully vaccinated members to go into quarantine at any one time.”

The Police Association is also citing advice from Immunisation Coalition head Dr Rod Pearce – a former Australian Medical Association SA president who has had a long association with the union, including a regular column in its journal.

Pearce said today that while his view was that people should be vaccinated, there would always be a small proportion of the population that would not be.

“It’s a question about how to actually continue to use them constructively,” he said.

“It’s reasonable to at least talk about that and see if there’s some safe options where people who aren’t vaccinated can continue to work.”