Dan Purdie, Nigel Dalton rail against crime crisis in South Mackay sports precinct
A Mackay tennis coach is worried the sports precinct is being targeted by repeat offenders, after burnt out cars and break ins increase.
Mackay
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Thousands of dollars of damage to a community sports club, just to break into a safe holding a measly $230.
After the latest incident at Mackay’s community sports precinct, including vehicle fires and break ins, head tennis coach Steven Merker feels it has become the target of criminal behaviour.
“They smashed their way through our doors,” Mr Merker said, describing the most recent burglary of the tennis club.
“Volunteers keep coming and fixing them, but they just break in again.”
The target was the clubs safe, which at the time contained $230.
“Even after it was broken into it was so old and heavy we had to have a tow truck take it away.”
In the LNPs second official campaign event of ‘underdog’ candidate Nigel Dalton, Shadow Minister for Police and Community Safety Dan Purdie attributed the incident to youth criminals.
“Our police here in Mackay are fighting the crime crisis with both hands tied behind their back,” Mr Purdie said.
The visit from Mr Purdie comes after shots were fired by sitting member for Mackay Julieanne Gilbert who said “if (Mr Dalton) saying youth crime is out of control here, that was his program that money was pumped into to reduce youth crime”.
“For the local member to come out and shift the blame for that crisis onto our frontline police is a slap in the face to every police officer in Mackay,” Mr Purdie said.
He went on to say that police had had a gutful of Labors “watered down laws” and were leaving in droves, going as far to mention a former colleague of his leaving the force to become a bus driver.
This comes two months after Steven Miles announced 20 new officers and 28 new vehicles were being deployed to the Mackay region and 500 new recruits were in training across Queensland.
LNP candidate for Mackay Nigel Dalton praised the performance of detectives who were arresting youth offenders, but said that oftentimes “they’re collecting them again next week because they’re just walking out the door.”
“We need to make sure that our community has good standards of punishments and boundaries for these young people.”
Mr Purdie said that “nothing was off the table” when it came to combating the crime crisis, but added “we don’t want to see every offender locked up.”
“But, we do know that a harsh penalty acts as a strong deterrent.
“There needs to be consequences for actions and we will be releasing policy sooner rather than later that will bring back consequences.”
Acting Superintendent for the Mackay Whitsundays District Emma Novosel had previously said that Mackay had a relatively small cohort of around 12 repeat youth offenders.
For Mr Merker, all he can do for now is clean up and keep on keeping on.
“Please stop and basically think about that you’re just hurting your fellow humans and the community at large,” he said.
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