By Nicole Precel and Alex Crowe
Carrying a knife is becoming normalised for some children in Melbourne and police should be given increased powers to use metal-detecting wands to randomly scan people for weapons, a federal Labor MP says.
In June, Michelle Ananda-Rajah wrote to federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and state Police Minister Anthony Carbines following a February attack on a teenager in Ashburton, located in her inner south-east Melbourne electorate of Higgins.
Michelle Ananda-Rajah says local police told her it was becoming “normalised for kids to walk out of their house grabbing their keys, a phone and their knife”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
In a letter to Ananda-Rajah seen by The Age, Dreyfus said he had chaired a meeting of the Police Ministers Council that included a discussion on the emergence of “criminal street gangs” and individuals using weapons like knives and machetes in public places.
Dreyfus said the council, which consists of police ministers from each state and territory, acknowledged the threat posed and “agreed that suppressing street gangs” was a priority area of concern to maintain public safety and confidence.
The council also agreed to consider other ways that law enforcement agencies across Australia could collaborate better, coordinate efforts and boost information sharing.
In a written response to Ananda-Rajah, Carbines said Victoria Police had the right to conduct searches without a warrant within a designated area and acknowledged that there were lessons to be learnt from police interstate.
He said police had been “proactively monitoring high-risk youth offenders in the community” and the state government was funding an early intervention program in parts of Victoria with higher rates of youth offending.
“I agree that we can learn from strategies deployed by other jurisdictions and that we shouldn’t wait for further tragedies to occur before considering what further action can be taken,” Carbines said.
Ananda-Rajah said she had seen reports that in other states where police were equipped with a metal-detecting wands to find knives and other types of metallic instruments.
“I brought it to the attention of the attorney-general ... to raise this with police ministers at his next meeting, which he has. This is clearly on their radar.”
Ananda-Rajah said there were concerns this could result in racial profiling, but that these issues were not specific to certain demographics or ethnicities.
“It would be a mistake to think this is a problem occurring in someone else’s backyard. It’s occurring in our own communities and adjacent to our own communities,” she said.
Ananda-Rajah said a local police commander had told her it was becoming “normalised for kids to walk out of their house grabbing their keys, a phone and their knife”. She said she wasn’t advocating for kids to be thrown in jail.
“That is not the answer, the answer is to keep the community safe, keep these kids safe and look at youth justice programs,” she said.
“We can’t be feeling worried when our kids are coming home from school or going out.
“We can’t let knife crime take hold of our society. That is not the country I want to see. These things you have to nip them in the bud, that’s what I believe.”
Queensland Police have been granted expanded powers to stop and search people for knives using detection wands in a two-year trial. Officers will be granted the power to randomly search people for knives using detection wands following a trial on the Gold Coast.
A special investigation from The Age recently found that knife violence has reached unprecedented levels in Victoria, sparking police operations targeting at-risk young people, gang crime and weapons possession.
Queensland Police can stop and search people for knives with metal detector wands.
In August, Melbourne private schools Sacre Coeur and Scotch College warned school communities about students being attacked and robbed at Chadstone shopping centre and at knifepoint on Glenferrie Rd in Hawthorn.
But Youth Support and Advocacy Service chief executive officer Andrew Bruun said increasing stop and search powers for police wouldn’t solve the issue and could cause racial profiling.
Bruun called for the formation of an expert advisory group, rather than “jumping into solution mode”. “We need to define the issue and determine what is the best response,” he said.
He said any response needed to be tailored to particular schools, to connect with local communities and services.
It was important not to demonise kids who carried knives, but to try to understand them, to connect with them, their families and their communities, Bruun said.
“It’s a sign of fear, generally, and then it becomes like an arms race: ‘That person has a knife I have to carry a knife’,” he said.
“If you say to a kid, ‘Don’t carry a knife’ – they won’t listen to you. Young people don’t change by being told what to do, but by being shown a different way by people who care about it and are supported.”
Dr Erin Leif, a senior lecturer in education at Monash University, said that fighting and other forms of youth violence were often pre-planned and influenced by factors outside of the school environment.
She said while Australian schools were generally safe, each instance of violence at school needed to be taken seriously and responded to.
“Youth violence may be influenced by many factors, including exposure to violence at home, neighbourhood violence and crime, access to weapons, substance abuse, exclusion from school or low school achievement, and anti-social peer groups,” Leif said.
Addressing youth violence required a community approach, she said.
“Research suggests that we can prevent the likelihood of youth violence by teaching young people problem-solving and emotional regulation skills, establishing warm and caring relationships between young people and adults, helping young people interact with prosocial and non-violent peers, and providing supervision to young people outside of school.
“These have been termed ‘protective factors’, because they can protect against the development of violent behaviour in young people who are exposed to risk factors.”
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