Rita Panahi: Enough police semantics over gang violence
HOW can we be confident that authorities are tackling African youth gangs when the police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton ties himself in knots trying to redefine the word “gangs”, asks Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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THE obfuscation and mixed messages from Victoria police convey nothing but weakness.
Talk of a “zero tolerance approach” from a Victoria Police Commander means little when dozens of out-of-control youths go on a wild rampage through suburban streets without a single arrest.
We’ve seen it again and again; police watching on as violent youth cause havoc and terrorise innocent people.
This time it was in Taylors Hill but we’ve witnessed similar scenes in North Melbourne, Footscray, St Kilda and other parts of Melbourne in recent months.
At some point police command need to stop playing politics and devote their efforts to policing.
YOUTHS WREAKS HAVOC IN TAYLORS HILL
DON’T BLAME VICTIMS FOR GANGS CRISIS
How can we be confident that police are tackling African gangs when the Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton ties himself in knots trying to redefine the word, ‘gangs’.
He said the “traditional” label of a gang might make people think of people in leather jackets like in the New York street gangs of “West Side Story”
Gangs, groups, posses, mobs, squads … call them what you want. The fact is that they exist and they are a problem.
Victoria police’s preoccupation with semantics is bordering on the bizarre.
Sudanese born Australians are only 0.11 per cent of the population but are vastly overrepresented in official crime statistics, close to 10 times more likely to offend than the general population.
Addressing that issue should be the number one priority of police, not playing word games or trying to rationalise and even minimise the impact of the criminality.
Ashton described the latest incident as groups of about 20 to 30 kids coming together to have a “bit of a clash”.
That’s an interesting way to describe more than 100 aggressive youths some of whom threw rocks at police and bragged that “police can’t touch us” and required the attendance of dozens of heavily armed riot and plain clothes police.
On Thursday, mounted police were patrolling the streets of Taylors Hill.
Much of the media, academia and political class has gone out of its way to mock Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton for suggesting there are people in Melbourne too scared to out for dinner.
Even Supreme Court judge Lex Lasry tweeted his disdain: “Breaking: there are citizens out to dinner in Mansfield tonight and they’re not worried.”
But a poll commissioned by Fairfax in two outer Melbourne suburbs earlier this year — no doubt to prove Dutton wrong — showed that people are in fact genuinely worried.
Repondents were asked: Are less likely to go out at night than you were 12 months ago, because of the threat of gang violence?
62.1 per cent of respondents in Tarneit and 55.2 per cent in Cranbourne said yes. Only one in three in both suburbs said no.
It’s time that police command stood with law-abiding citizens and tackled gang violence without fear of offending the perpetually offended.
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