The Laura police station in southern Cape York was unstaffed as of Friday 16 October while the Queensland Police Service sought a relieving officer, according to an ABC Far North report. This article describes the position reported on that date; staffing may have changed since.
QPS told the ABC that officers from Cooktown and Hope Vale were responding to calls for service and carrying out patrols in the Laura area in the meantime. The service said recruitment was underway and that it wanted a relief officer to start as soon as possible.
Local residents and the Indigenous Family Violence Legal Service raised concerns about response times and safety for people needing urgent support in a remote community. Those concerns were reported by the ABC; this article does not independently establish the time taken to respond to any individual call.
QPS did not give a public date for when the station would be staffed again. Readers seeking the current service arrangement should check directly with QPS rather than relying on the 16 October status. Source: ABC Far North, 16 October 2026.
Image disclosure: The accompanying image is an AI-generated editorial illustration of a fictional remote civic building. It is not a photograph of Laura police station or the people involved.
