Mike O’Connor: Police should take up Qld govt’s offer and hit hardcore crime suburbs hard

This has been a long time coming but nothing that has been done has lessened the steady erosion of the right of people to feel safe in their homes or on the street, writes Mike O’Connor.

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If you are wondering as to the nature of that emotion that is gnawing away at your inner being, that ever-present feeling of disquiet that shadows you through your day, then I may have the answer.

It’s impotence, a sense that you are being battered and bruised by forces over which you have no control and which you are unable to confront or neutralise.

When we moved from a house in the northern suburbs to a high- rise apartment in the inner city seven years ago, we did so for the convenience of nearby shops, restaurants and transport.

Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

At the time we didn’t think of our apartment tower as a fortress, but we do now. “If we were still living in our old house, I’d be thinking seriously about getting a guard dog,” I said to my wife as we watched the latest reports of violent assault, theft, breaking-and-entering and general mayhem unfold on the TV screen.

We are not completely immune. Thieves still occasionally breach security and steal from storage cages, but we don’t go to bed hoping that tonight won’t be the night that we will be terrorised by a machete-wielding gang with zero respect for life or law.

Queenslanders are enduring a plague of lawlessness for which it seems there is no cure, says Mike O’Connor. Picture: iStock

Impotence can lead to anger, an anger fuelled by the knowledge that some of the perpetrators came to this country in search of a better life, to escape the poverty and lack of opportunity into which they had been born.

It’s reasonable to assume that they found it, so how is it that instead of grasping it as successive waves of immigrants to this country have done for two centuries and rejoicing in their good fortune, they ignore our laws?

Police should take the government up on its offer they can have whatever resources they want and saturate the hardcore suburbs with a forceful presence, says Mike O’Connor. Picture: iStock

The answer would seem to be because they can. It’s political poison for Premier Steven Miles and his government – but forget the politics, forget the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the imagined climate-change crisis. This is different. This cuts to the very core of life in our city.

This has been a long time coming but nothing that has been done has lessened the steady erosion of the right of people to feel safe in their homes or on the street.

If tolerance and counselling have had any effect, there is little evidence of it. The buck stops with the government on this.

It has said the police can have whatever resources they want.

They should take the government up on it and saturate the hardcore suburbs with a lasting and forceful presence.