Crackdown on Victoria’s most wanted train vandals
AN ENRAGED man has been caught on CCTV kicking, punching and throwing rocks at a myki machine at Tecoma, causing $30,000 damage. The footage was released in a police crackdown on criminals wrecking the city’s railway network.
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POLICE are hunting down Victoria’s most wanted train vandals as they launch a crackdown on criminal damage across the city’s railway network.
Victoria Police has released photographs and CCTV footage of suspects they want to question about recent incidents of vandalism.
In one case, vision obtained by the Herald Sun shows an enraged man in his 20s kicking, punching and throwing rocks at a myki machine at Tecoma station, causing $30,000 damage.
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Other cases involve graffitiing of trains, inside and out. Metro Trains spends more than $10 million a year cleaning and repairing vandalism at stations and trains across Melbourne.
Leading Senior Constable Luke Gandolfo, of Victoria Police’s Transit Safety Division, said the vandals were “fools” who did not believe they were doing anything wrong.
“They try to convince you until they’re blue in the face that they’re full-blown artists,” he said. “But we all know for a fact they are far from that.
“They’re vandals. Plain and simple. They have no respect for anyone else or other people’s property,” he said.
Senior Constable Gandolfo said the suspects were mostly in their 20s and 30s, old enough to know better.
“It’s not like these criminals are rebellious teenagers. They’re adults, but they’re not behaving like adults.”
He warned: “It’s not a matter of if we catch you, it’s a matter of when, and be sure that we will get you and hold you accountable.”
Police are hunting:
— TWO MEN who tagged multiple train carriages in graffiti before fleeing at Pascoe Vale station on January 22.
— A MAN who graffiti a train carriage while on-board a Frankston bound train on December 4, 2017.
— A YOUNG man who tagged the outside of a carriage at Richmond station after he exited the Sandringham line on December 1, 2017.
— TWO MEN who boarded a Cranbourne/Pakenham line train at Flinders Street and proceeded to tag ‘FBFK2, DKAPMAOK and DKAR’ in different areas of the train on October 8, 2017.
— A MAN who boarded the Upfield line at Coburg station and graffiti a train carriage on January 22.
— A MAN, with texta across his forehead, who tagged a carriage in black graffiti and fled at Moonee Ponds station on December 12, 2017.
Metro spokesman Marcus Williams said that crews were out day and night removing graffiti from the network.
“We have more than 9000 CCTV cameras and a security and surveillance team tracking vandals. We catalogue every tag and provide intelligence and CCTV to police,” he said.
He said when vandals were prosecuted Metro sought costs for the clean-up bill in court.
Metro employs 60 staff to deal with graffiti removal on more than 800km of railway.
Up to 12,000sq m of graffiti is removed from stations and structures a month and 800sq m from train exteriors.
About 1500 graffiti tags are removed from stations, 1400 from inside trains, and 75 from the exteriors of trains.
A spokeswoman for Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said: “Any dollar spent fixing senseless vandalism across the public transport network is one dollar too many.
“This money could be better invested in more services.
“As well as being a crime, vandalism in and around an operating public transport network is incredibly dangerous,” she said.
“Vandals are putting their lives, and the lives of our public transport staff and the travelling public at risk.”
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