Chief Superintendent Craig Hanlon says Townsville Police hunting down stolen car crims
The district’s top police officer says it’s lucky no one was killed in a “cowardly” and “disgusting” stolen car rampage across a packed soccer field.
Townsville
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THE district’s top police officer says it’s lucky no one was killed in a “cowardly” and “disgusting” stolen car rampage across a packed soccer field.
Townsville District Chief Superintendent Craig Hanlon said police would be doing everything in their power to hunt down a group of juvenile “lunatics” who tried to mow down children during soccer training at a field in Mundingburra on Wednesday.
Superintendent Hanlon said they were looking for a group of about six young people, and called on parents and guardians to step up and discipline their children.
“I don’t want to go to another funeral, of either an offender or innocent victim, when we could have stopped this by someone having a conversation with a young person or young adult,” Superintendent Hanlon said.
The day after the latest rampage, Brisbane police launched a taskforce to target youth street gangs wreaking havoc in the southeast, while Townsville is left with short police stings.
It comes a few weeks after the closure of Operation Nano, which netted 61 people on 128 charges in about 10 days.
Superintendent Hanlon said these types of operations would always be a part of their “bread and butter”, but a long-term taskforce was “resource intensive”.
“We have a lot of times where a number of the issues occur after hours and at night. We’ve got to be mindful we don’t burn out our staff.”
This week, the state government announced a 12-month trial of military drones in Townsville.
When asked if those drones could have helped police in this instance, Superintendent Hanlon said it was “to be decided” how the equipment would work.
“We can’t have drones up 24/7. How we use them and where we use them … will be intelligence based, where we put our police resources down.”
The stolen cars are yet to be recovered and no one has been arrested.
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