Gold Coast 2018 crime data: 11 sexual assaults and 55 assaults occur weekly
NEW data released by Queensland police paints a sobering picture of violence crime on the Gold Coast, including the shockingly high number of sexual assaults reported weekly.
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MORE than 11 sexual offences and 55 assaults are reported on the Gold Coast every week.
There were also more than 41 stolen car and over 74 home break-in reports a week during the 2017/18 financial year.
Queensland Police statistics released this month reveal most offences against the person have risen over the past five years, while offences against property have also slightly risen due to a leap in the number of stolen car reports and theft around the Coast.
Police have chalked up the rise in assaults and sexual offences to their focus on domestic violence offenders and charging them with criminal offences, rather than just a breach of their orders or a generic DV offence.
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Regional Crime Coordinator Kerry Johnson said the jump in the offences against the person come down to better reporting of domestic violence offences.
“If someone was to say to me, is the Gold Coast a more dangerous place now, I’d say no, it’s more accountable, because we now know what’s going on in the home,” he said.
“In the past there were offences in the home and it was never reported, we’d never see those figures.
“You sit down with the victims now and have a full download of what’s been going on, we start seeing rape, strangulation, assault offences over a long period of time and we charge the offender with those offences.”
He also said detectives had also taken a number of reports on historic sex offences, which go back decades and include allegations of multiple offences.
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He said a number of robberies occurred between people who knew each other, although there were still random attacks on the street.
“What we’re seeing in robberies across the board, is less and less use of firearms … more and more use of force and threats,” he said.
“At one time we were seeing a guy running into a bank with a gun, that stuff we see very rarely now. Most of our violent robberies where people get hurt, are your home invasion style robberies and quite often you’ll see that the offenders are known to the victims.”
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Bond University Criminologist Dr Terry Goldsworthy said police needed to rethink their strategy.
“My take away from all this is there is something wrong with the police in Queensland,” he said.
“We’ve got less enforcement happening (drug and weapons offences), but we’ve got reported crime by the public increasing substantially.
“I think it’s time to go back to the planning board and see how they’re going to fix it … we haven’t seen a decrease since 2014.
“When you put that in the light of New South Wales and Victoria, which are experiencing substantial declines in crime reported by the public, you have to ask why isn’t Queensland?”
Supt Johnson said Gold Coast police were working on better intelligence-led policing in the area.
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“We have monthly meetings where we raise targets, crime issues and try to get in front of the game by resourcing correctly,” he said.
“Something might be starting to sneak up, or this group, or that crime syndicate, is coming in, so what we’re doing is taking our time to identify issues and target them before they get out of control.
“We look at it from a community harm perspective, what it causing the greatest amount of harm. Then we start pushing our assets towards getting on top of the issue.
“We have 1000 staff in this district, we have a helicopter, water police, we have all these assets, and we’ve pushed hard at getting rid of the notion of boundaries.
“The crooks don’t sit there and go, we’re leaving Broadbeach now, we’d better stop committing crime, so why should our officers do the same?”
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