Why Victoria Police needs to act on ‘gang violence’

Victoria Police’s preoccupation with semantics is bordering on the bizarre. 

Earlier this year Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton simultaneously announced the formation of a new African-Australian community taskforce to tackle youth crime and street violence, and rubbished suggestions that there was an African gang crisis.

Victoria Police’s preoccupation with semantics is bordering on the bizarre. 

How can we be confident that police officers are tackling African gangs when Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton ties himself in knots trying to redefine the word gang?

Ashton said the “traditional” label of a gang might confuse Victorians and make them think of people in leather jackets, such as the New York street gangs of West Side Story.

The aversion to the word “gang” is widespread among the upper echelons of the force.

After police arrested 14 members of a youth gang last month, in relation to armed carjackings and aggravated robberies, they were at pains to point out that they were not a gang but “a collective group of individuals who know each other”.

Gangs, groups, posses, mobs, squads … call them what you want.

The fact is that they exist and they are a problem.

Only 0.11 per cent of the Victorian population are Sudanese-born but they are vastly over-represented in official crime statistics.

According to Crime Statistics Agency data released last December they are close to 10 times more likely to offend than the general population.

That over-representation increases further when looking at violent offences such as aggravated burglaries and serious assaults.

Among youngsters, the statistics are even more sobering.

Read full piece here.