Keith Woods opinion: Vigilante action can have the most awful unintended consequences

Social media posts doing the rounds on the Gold Coast highlight a key issue about crime – and it’s a problem we just don’t need, writes Keith Woods.

A concerning image made the rounds on social media on the Gold Coast at the weekend.

It showed a man with blood oozing from his temple and his nose, and dripping down his neck.

Arguably more concerning was the message that accompanied the picture.

“If this is your father, brother, uncle, mate, neighbour or just the guy you seen once at Woolies then keep an eye open and pull him into line because he likes to enter places he doesn’t belong with side cutters he thinks are keys to access things that don’t belong to him.

“This is called f*** around and find out and there is plenty more of it to go around.”

While it was not revealed how the man sustained his injuries, or who was responsible, it’s pretty clear the person who wrote these words wanted the impression to go out that they were as a result of his alleged crimes.

Another example posted to a Gold Coast Facebook group on Sunday showed a picture of two young people standing on a roof.

The accompanying text said they had been subjected to a “drenching” with a fire hose.

They were social media posts that spoke to the frustration felt by many people about crime on the Gold Coast and the punishments meted out by courts – or lack of them.

Having spent plenty of time watching cases go through the courts complex at Southport, this columnist can sympathise.

In comments on both posts, most people were borderline euphoric.

But all of them are dead wrong.

If the man apparently assaulted suffered a serious medical condition as a result, whoever was responsible could end up facing serious criminal charges.

Ditto if those kids on the roof were knocked off it and suffered serious injuries.

Jennifer Board was the innocent victim when a car chasing a stolen vehicle at high speed lost control and crashed into her.

So-called vigilantism often leads to tragedy – with innocent people the ones who suffer most.

Take a recent case in Townsville, a place where rates of car theft and youth crime far outstrip anything experienced on the Gold Coast.

In that benighted city Christopher Michael Hughes was also seeing posts on Facebook egging on vigilante behaviour.

On the night of February 5, 2021 he took it upon himself to chase a stolen vehicle in his Holden Statesman.

Passengers in the car were livestreaming the chase via a group phone call to a Facebook group called ‘MOB’, dedicated to tracking and finding stolen cars in Townsville.

It was a sobering example of why the experts in these matters – the Queensland Police Service – do not engage in these kinds of pursuits.

Both vehicles reached speeds of up to 160km/h during the chase, before Hughes lost control of his car and crashed into the motorcycle being driven by 22-year-old Jennifer Board.

Ms Board, a popular local who had sat the entrance exam to join the Queensland Police Service just three days earlier, was killed instantly.

The driver of the stolen vehicle, Gregory Clubb, was sentenced to 13-and-a-half years’ jail after being found guilty of manslaughter.

Hughes, the self-styled ‘vigilante’, will serve almost as long after being sentenced to 12 years, also for manslaughter.

The Townsville Bulletin, in its report on his sentencing, wrote about a powerful victim impact statement made by Ms Board’s devastated sister Siana to the court.

“In her last moments, she faced brutality … you claim to be an enforcer of justice Chris Hughes, but your actions were anything but just,” she said.

“Our community does not need more people like you, who bring pain.”

Cassius Turvey was an innocent 15-year-old killed as he walked home from school.

This is but one example of the trauma that can be inflicted when people take the law into their own hands.

There have been many more.

In the news last week was the despicable killing of 15-year-old Cassius Turvey in Perth in October 2022, by men out for revenge after the smashing of car windows.

Turvey had nothing to do with the alleged vandalism, he was a thoroughly innocent child, but lost his life after being beaten as he innocently walked home from school.

Jack Steven James Brearley, 24, and Brodie Lee Palmer, 30, were sentenced to life imprisonment last Friday after being convicted of Turvey’s murder.

All these cases carry clear messages. People simply cannot and must not seek to take the law into their own hands.

This is not some Third World failed state. This is Australia, and in Australia we have the rule of law administered by a professional police service and the courts.

Centuries of experience have told us there is no better way.

Vigilante behaviour of any sort is no kind of solution, no matter what the problem.

Anyone concerned about criminal behaviour on the Gold Coast should avoid Facebook and its know-it-alls and instead call the police.

Follow @keithjwoods

Originally published as Keith Woods opinion: Vigilante action can have the most awful unintended consequences