Seven-word response at Kmart car fire stuns cop

A local has perfectly captured the levels of distress in the crime-riddled Australian town.

An Alice Springs local has left a police officer stunned with a seven-word response that perfectly captured the levels of distress in the crime-riddled town.

Darren Clark, who runs the Action for Alice Facebook page documenting crime in the Northern Territory, shared a video on Saturday of a car engulfed in flames at the town’s Kmart carpark. He followed it with a video of emergency response teams at the scene.

Firefighters could be seen working hard to extinguish the blaze, before two police officers approached Mr Clark and asked him to leave.

“You’re in a crime scene right now,” one of the officers says, to which Mr Clark responded: “The whole f**king town’s a crime scene”.

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The fire captured in the clips was one of at least two cars that was set alight in Alice Springs on Friday night, in what Mr Clark described as “another night of total anarchy”.

The troubled town dominated headlines earlier this year as locals chronicled an extraordinary crime wave, before a brief visit from Anthony Albanese seemed to cause national concern for the issue to vanish.

But Mr Clark says the crime wave is far from over.

Other videos from Friday — which only came to light after Action for Alice served a 28-day ban for bullying and harassment — showed multiple cars engulfed in flames, a home burned to the ground, several police cars chasing allegedly stolen vehicles and at least one bushfire raging.

Mr Clark said several businesses including an Indigenous TV station were ransacked. The bushfire captured in one of the clips destroyed properties in a rural area by the airport and is believed to have been deliberately lit.

In an impassioned audio message provided to news.com.au, Mr Clark called on political leaders to act.

“As the sun comes up in Alice Springs, we’ve endured another night of total anarchy. Our CBD is full of youths, it’s full of drunks, it’s out of control,” he said.

“We’ve had businesses broken into from 9 o’clock last night. An Indigenous TV station smashed up, a vehicle full of technical gear stolen. We’ve got another Prado on the loose somewhere, we’ve got a car on fire in the Kmart carpark, we’ve got a car set on fire in Gillen, a suburb of Alice Springs.

“When does this stop? Albanese, step up to the plate … Get out of your bunker and start looking after the people because this place is going to burn to the ground.”

A bushfire, believed to be deliberately lit, ripped through a residential area by the airport and destroyed multiple homes. Picture: Facebook / Action For Alice 2020

The Prime Minister made a brief four-hour visit to Alice Springs in late January to announce a crackdown on the sale of alcohol and $31 million in funding for the town.

As reported by news.com.au at the time, multiple sources claimed at-risk youths were removed from Alice Springs in an effort to clean up the town prior to Mr Albanese’s visit.

NT Police earlier this month recorded a drop in domestic violence calls, property offences and alcohol-related violence after the introduction of the reforms, but Mr Clark said they hadn’t gone far enough.

He called the situation in Alice Springs and the Northern Territory more broadly a “blight on [Mr Albanese’s] leadership”.

“This simply isn’t good enough,” Mr Clark said.

“You didn’t want to come up here. The media forced you to come up here. Well, how about you come up here now and see what’s been left behind.

“You don’t do anything, mate. You shed tears on TV, that’s great, that’s passion … but the people of Alice Springs are shedding tears every day.”

Another local, Ben Crawford, called on the NT government to “get serious on crime” as he shared footage of a gang of young men breaking into his business for the fifth time in two years.

“Here we go again. It’s 1.45am Saturday morning, alarms activated earlier tonight. Both me and cops attend and yep they have broken in again, obviously looking for car keys,” Mr Crawford wrote alongside the CCTV footage.

“Glad they got the decoy box off the wall in my office and got nothing. Building has been made secure. Now to clean up the mess tomorrow morning after the forensic guys do their thing.

“NT government, this is the fifth time in two years. Start getting serious on crime, which you won’t because yet again we don’t exist and these kids are classed as naughty little children.”

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Originally published as Seven-word response at Kmart car fire stuns cop