Toowoomba youth crime: Police reveal plan to stop social media notoriety

Police have revealed their plans to target out-of-control youth who gain notoriety through a variety of social media platforms, as car thefts spike to their highest rates in 20 years.

Police are moving to block young offenders who post their criminal exploits online in the wake of a wave of Darling Downs car thefts.

Assistant Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon, who heads the state’s Youth Crime Task Force, said social media had been a key factor in feeding youth crime.

“We will … move to disrupt and have accounts shut down with the assistance of the national eSafety Commissioner and industry partners,” she said.

Teenagers have been in recent months caught sharing footage of stolen cars to popular platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

The plan to curb social media use came following a roundtable the Queensland Police Service hosted between industry bodies and law enforcement.

Despite vehicle thefts in the Darling Downs district surging to their highest point in the past 20 years in 2022, Assistant Commissioner Scanlon dismissed the notion youth crime was “out of control”.

“I’ve been a police officer for over 35 years. I was dealing with children stealing motor vehicles in the 1980s,” she said.

“They just stole different types of motor vehicles, and there wasn’t social media back then.

“This is not a new behaviour amongst children who commit crime.”

There have been more than 1000 unlawful use of a motor vehicle offences in 2022.

The Assistant Commissioner visited Toowoomba on Wednesday to provide an update on the task force, which was formed in February 2021.

She said the task force remained committed to addressing the root causes of youth crime, in partnership with an assortment of state government agencies.

A key focus for the task force is a group of about 400 young offenders, who police say commit 50 per cent of youth crime.

“They remain the focus, not just in policing their activities, opposing bail, holding them in custody where we need to, but also importantly, the work that must occur to change over time that must focus on the root causes of crime – not just the way police respond,” Assistant Commissioner Scanlon said.

The task force was created in conjunction with measures the state government introduced in 2021, which included the reversing the presumption of bail for serious offending and a trial of GPS tracking.

“Obviously, you would know there are more young people in custody, and the numbers have increased, that’s because of some of the reforms,” Assistant Commissioner Scanlon said.

“Reverse presumption of bail is an important thing to protect the community.”

The state government was last week accused of “political games” when it released an interim report into the reforms late Tuesday.

It also revealed the proportion of young people who offended while on bail increased from 47 per cent in 2019 to 53 per cent in 2021.

Originally published as Toowoomba youth crime: Police reveal plan to stop social media notoriety