Vyleen White’s daughter Cindy Micallef calls for return of shopping centre police beats

More than a dozen police beats at some of Qld’s biggest shopping centres have been closed as calls grow for change.

More than a dozen police beats at some of Queensland’s biggest shopping centres have closed in recent years.

Police beats at some of the state biggest shopping centres have been closed despite a series of violent incidents.

Fourteen police beats have been shut down over the past three years, including ones in Robina Town Centre on the Gold Coast – where a worker was stabbed in 2021 – and at Riverlink Shopping Centre in Ipswich, where a mass brawl involving women and children erupted earlier this year.

There are 28 police beat shop fronts remaining across Queensland.

The grieving family of a grandmother stabbed to death in a shopping centre car park has joined with former cops to call for the closed police beats to be reopened and the program expanded.

Cindy Micallef’s mother Vyleen White was killed in an alleged carjacking outside a Redbank Plains shopping centre in February and a 16-year-old boy was charged with her murder.

Ms Micallef, who works inside a shopping centre, said she was now always on edge.

Vyleen White was stabbed to death at a shopping centre.

Her daughter Cindy White has called for the return of more police beats. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Police have recently rolled out mobile police beat vans as a replacement for the shop fronts that have shut down, with those vans now popping up in shopping centres to provide extra police presence. But Ms Micallef says it’s not enough.

“They say the mobile van is enough to cover the area, which it’s not,” Ms Micallef said.

“We all know it’s not because, I mean, they’re very intermittent. But if it’s a hot spot, there need to be more police presence.

“The government are throwing money away but they are not putting police beats where they need to go.”

Just last week Raymond Wilkinson was found in the toilets of Australia Fair Shopping Centre clinging to life after he was allegedly stabbed in the chest.

Former senior police officer turned criminologist Dr Terry Goldsworthy said it was problematic that there were less police beats.

“If you look at Jack’s Law, they’ve expanded out the wanding provisions to cover things like shopping centres,” he said.

“So obviously the police perceive that shopping centres can be areas where crime occurs or people gather and can be problematic.

“I think having a presence there is beneficial to prevent and also ensure that the community’s got a safe environment to go and shop.”

Ex-Gold Coast police superintendent Jim Keogh said shopping centres should be treated in the same way as other places of “mass gatherings”, like sporting events.

“If the crime trends and the indications in relation to where crime is occurring is leading towards shopping centres you’ve got to question is it a good move to withdraw the police resources from such big complexes”,” Mr Keogh said.

“I think it's a foolhardy decision.

“I am friends with people who are security guards at shopping centres. And when the police were removed from the shopping centres, they became powerless, and the response from the police was to contact the local police station.

Shopping centres, like the one at Town Square Redbank Plains, have become more and more dangerous. Picture: Glenn Campbell/NCA NewsWire

“Well, the response times weren’t good, and of course, the offences continued to the point where the security staff stopped contacting police.”

There have been more than 33,500 proactive patrols of shopping centres, business retail and restaurant precincts across Queensland as part of Operation Unison, police said.

Cairns Central Police Beat. Picture Emily Barker.

“Where decisions have been made to close shopping centre police beats, the shopping centre is still serviced by local police stations and the flexible deployment of 20 operational Mobile Police Beats across 11 Districts, with a further 30 mobile police beats to be delivered by 2027,” she said.

“The ‘Bring the Beat’ police engagement program offers communities, such as Brisbane, Townsville and Cairns an opportunity to request a Mobile Police Beat be deployed to a preferred location, providing greater access and support from policing resources as well as a high visibility presence.”

Originally published as Vyleen White’s daughter Cindy Micallef calls for return of shopping centre police beats