Police make in-roads on knives but warn there is still more to be done
Police are confident they have made in-roads in the battle to stop kids brandishing knives on our streets but say there is still more to be done to prevent violent attacks.
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Police are confident they have made in-roads in the battle to stop kids brandishing knives on our streets but say there is still more to be done to prevent violent attacks.
Countess police hours have been put in across the Gold Coast to try and curb knife crime since a horror period from September 2019 to September 2020 where four people were fatally stabbed in Gold Coast streets.
Since then police have introduced a wanding trial in Surfers Paradise, which uses handheld metal detectors to search for knives and a number of education programs.
Gold Coast Police Superintendent Rhys Wildman said: “We are seeing some improvements.”
“However, it only takes someone to make a poor decision and a series of lives are destroyed.”
On Friday, two people were jailed for killing 17-year-old Jack Beasley, who was stabbed in the chest near the Surfers Paradise IGA on December 13, 2019.
On Wednesday four people were committed to trial in relation to the fatal stabbing of 27-year-old dad Raymond Harris on Orchid Ave on September 23, 2020. Three will stand trial for murder and a fourth will stand trial for accessory after the fact.
After Mr Harris’ death – the fourth fatal street stabbing in about a year – Gold Coast Police regional crime co-ordinator Detective Superintendent Brendan Smith had “had enough”.
“What do we have to say to our young people that this enough and they’ve got to stop carrying knives? There is no excuse for it and we will come down hard on anyone that is carrying a knife in public in Queensland,” he said at the time.
He does think things have changed now and puts that down to the waning trial.
“The message is out that is police are going to be wanding and checking for knives,” he said.
Last month the Bulletin revealed that since April last year, than 14,000 people – including 3800 juveniles – had been searched and 174 weapons found by June 30.
Those weapons included knives – from pocket knives to flick knives -tomahawks, cleavers, guns and knuckledusters.
Det Supt Smith said people were starting to understand the gravity of the situation when it comes to knife violence.
“This has become an extension of the one punch can kill message,” he said.
“One centimetre either way and you are dead.”
But police are still having to deal with incidents involving knives and Det Supt Smith said they had to keep working to message still needed to spread that message.
“You don’t need a knife unless you are going fishing,” he said.
He said police really wanted peers to talk to each other about it.
Police are also working on trying to get social media influencers to take up the anti-knife cause.
Gatenby Criminal Lawyers director Michael Gatenby – who recently had five clients charged for different fatal stabbings – said he had noticed knife crime had been on the decrease.
“Since the waning trial began there hasn’t been as much in terms of deaths or serious injuries from wounding,” he said.
“Maybe it has had an effect.
“There was that real high point but it seems to have dropped off.”
Police are not alone in their war against knives.
Courts have been vigilant, with magistrates giving young teens caught with knives a dressing down, explaining why the practice is so dangerous.
In December 2020, Magistrate Kathleen Payne told one 19-year-old found with a knife: Young people like yourself are dying as a consequence of actions of young people carrying knives and having fake bravado in the street.
“It can very easily turn what you might think is a nothing incident into a murder charge.
“Young people in your situation are putting their families and their communities through such agony as a consequence of carrying a knife in public.”
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