In the world of policing the more troops mantra is nearly always the answer for headline-seeking politicians, empire-building senior coppers and impatient editorial writers keen to hit the lunchtime sushi bar.

But then something interesting happened. In 2014 then Chief Commissioner Ken Lay said he didn't want more police.

In his 10-year blue paper he said that just building a bigger police force would not fix anything.

He called for taskforces, a more flexible workforce to hit trouble spots and a greater investment in specialists such as analysts, lawyers and forensic accountants.

"If we don't change we will be really good at reacting to crime and not very good at stopping it," he told Naked City.

"We need to reset. What does the community want, to prevent crime or catch the crooks after they have committed the crime?"

His successor, Graham Ashton is of the same view (which is hardly surprising as he was a major contributor to the blue paper).

In the build-up to the 2010 state election both sides fell into a bidding war, with the Coalition winners promising 1700 extra police plus more than 900 protective service officers.

And guess what? Crime still went up and we were all left to wonder what happened to all those brand new cops. The time it takes to get police to respond to a burglary has not improved, and there appears to be no major difference in the numbers of police you see on patrols.

It would seem they march out of the academy, march into a police station and drop off the planet.

As our world changes so does the role of police. Family violence – always a national disgrace – is now finally an investigative priority. The city that virtually closed at 10pm is now a 24-hour entertainment complex requiring a police presence and, sadly, terrorism is now big business.

The reality is police spend most of their time dealing with high-volume crimes such as theft from cars and house burglaries while spending little at the top end where the real problem lies.

Most of our crime is drug-related. The offenders are users trying to make money to score more drugs and as our drugs are the most expensive in the world they have to commit more crimes to score.

While most areas of policing have expanded one area appears to be going backwards.

It is the crime department – once the elite of the police force it has never been busier and never been smaller. Any more under the pump and they'd take to the lifeboats.

The drug squad is smaller, the homicide squad has shrunk and some traditional squads have been disbanded.

At the same time the crime department has taken on new duties such as Trident (docklands taskforce), Echo (Bikies and Middle Eastern crime), Icarus (drugs delivered through the post) and Sano (institutional child-sex abuse).

Crimes that didn't exist a generation ago such as the use of the Dark Web to import illegal product, internet scams and international frauds are now colossal.

The crime department is tiny compared to NSW's and some known organised crime syndicates are ignored. Take the investigation into illegal firearms; in NSW there is a full on taskforce, in Victoria there are a couple of detectives in a Mini Moke.

To tackle a crime syndicate is a massive investment – it may take years and result in a handful of arrests – but it can disrupt a crime cartel that is causing massive community damage.

In a world where results are statistic-based police tend to try to clean up reported crimes rather than worry about unreported ones. So catching one drunk in a punch on is statistically the same as arresting a millionaire drug boss on one count of importing drugs.

It is always easier to shoot fish in a barrel than hook a marlin.

The Australian Crime Commission has intelligence to justify at least 30 taskforces, there are cold-case murders that could be solved if there was any one working on them and there are drug bosses who are untouchable simply because no one is trying to touch them.

Virtually every day the joint taskforce Icarus finds commercial quantities of drugs in the post. So swamped are investigators that drugs valued at less than $100,000 are often simply destroyed with no one ever charged.

Perhaps the crime department has never recovered from the 2006 review by the Boston Consulting Group that threw out the existing structures to be replaced by a supposedly more flexible model.

The rule in organised crime is if you ignore a problem until it is entrenched it will take five costly years to get back to break-even point.

The Echo taskforce is doing fantastic work against outlaw motorcycle gangs but the bikies developed roots into "legitimate" industries such as security, debt collecting and building in the years when police ignored them.

It was the same with the notorious Sunshine Crew of Andrew Veniamin, Dino Dibra and Paul Kallipolitis – a gang connected to unemployed supermarket shelf stacker turned drug boss, Carl Williams.

For years their activities were largely ignored until the homicide squad began to investigate a series of underworld murders that all pointed to Veniamin as the hitman.

Then homicide detective Senior Sergeant Phil Swindells realised the connection and lobbied for a taskforce. It began as Rimer with just 12 staff under Swindells. Rimer became Purana, which ultimately made key arrests and stopped the murders, but the question remains. If police had worked on these crooks before the war how many would still be alive?

And how many tonnes of drugs would have been kept off the street? (There is an argument that the black market profits are so great the only answer is legalising the lot but that simply isn't going to happen).

One of the biggest problems involves Middle Eastern crime gangs shooting and wounding enemies, blasting buildings, importing drugs while running stolen car and armed robbery rings.

This, of course, didn't happen overnight.

In 2008 a seriously good Broadmeadows detective saw a group of violent Lebanese gangsters with a contempt for the law growing alarmingly.

Local detectives did what they could but Detective Sergeant Paul Lunt wanted a taskforce and called for the Australian Crime Commission and Purana to step in.

He was ignored and responded in a blistering internal email (Lunt was blunt and that is where we will leave the rhymes).

"The total incompetence of those charged with the responsibility of the management of investigations of major crime in this state ... None of you have obviously learned lessons from ... Purana. The only difference here is that no one has died. And that is only good luck not good management. But you're all more worried about your petty squabbles over staff ownership and whether you get criticised in the media."

Again – maybe if we had responded bluntly we wouldn't be facing the present mess.

Years ago the state's detectives were under the command of the assistant commissioner (crime). Now suburban and country detectives work within their regions and can be tasked accordingly.

Too often the urgent overwhelms the important so perhaps it is time to look back to move forward.

For those who consider organised crime someone else's problem consider this: A medium-size builder saw his foreman arrive wearing an outlaw bikie T-shirt in the company of another large man wearing the same club colours. They were carrying a third drug-affected fellow.

The foreman told his boss the semi-conscious one needed a job and would be starting on Monday at the site on a wage of $1500 cash.

When the boss wondered aloud what the snoozing snoozer could offer the workplace the second man in the club colours produced a photo.

It was of the builder's wife and children taken at school pick-up. The law-abiding builder immediately agreed to take on the new employee and as a bonus gave him all the cash in his wallet.

It was not reported to police.

Ken Lay was right to say that extra blue uniforms will not fix our problems but there are key areas that require more staff in a hurry.

The state government recently announced a $50 million boost for anti-terrorist police that included an extra 88 staff.

It is now time to do the same for the crime department that urgently needs 200 extra detectives.

For the government it would be a vote winner to tackle organised crime and for the police it would be a game changer to have the numbers to actually tackle these crime syndicates.

It would cost about $30 million a year. Yet internal police research shows that with adequate asset seizure laws they would recover $200 million in the first year.

This means we would make money, lock up crooks, disrupt the drug trade and Naked City would get more stories. Everyone is a winner!

Otherwise we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our recent history. And history shows this will bring on our next underworld war.

Then they will throw resources at the problem but then it will be too late.