Victoria needs a police force, not a service
VICTORIA Police command is using spin and semantics to avoid facing our gang problems. It’s time it became a force again, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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THE thin blue line has succumbed to identity politics. The signs are clear from the preoccupation with spin and semantics to the permissive attitude to lawless gangs of young men who show no fear of consequences because, often, there are none.
Victoria Police’s strategy of ordering frontline officers to “contain” violent, rampaging youth rather than arrest them only emboldens offenders.
You know what is an effective method of “containment” that renders thugs incapable of attacking people and property? Handcuffs. It is difficult to throw punches or projectiles if you’re in handcuffs and being led to the back of a divvy van. It’s also unlikely that you’ll engage in the same behaviour the following week.
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It’s little wonder that so many police working at the coalface are disillusioned. They know the criminals are gaming the system and are powerless to stop it.
We’ve seen it in places such as St Kilda, Taylors Hill, Werribee, North Melbourne and Footscray where youths have rampaged in full view of the police who make no arrests. What justification was there for Victoria Police’s failure to adequately staff an event at Collingwood’s Gasometer Hotel that local police had warned was likely to erupt into violence?
“They didn’t want to be seen to be targeting a particular demographic” a police source told the Herald Sun.
Never mind that the demographic is vastly overrepresented in official crime statistics, close to 10 times more likely to be charged with a crime than the rest of the population.
That overrepresentation for Sudanese-born Victorians increases sharply when looking at violent offences such as aggravated burglaries and serious assaults.
Imagine what the statistics would be like if police were actually making arrests during episodes of street violence. And the crime figures do not include offences committed by Australian-born members of the Sudanese community who, according to Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton, are even more likely to engage in criminal activity.
And yet the upper echelons of Victoria police are so worried about being labelled racist that they have become a laughing stock interstate. Even the Prime Minister had a go this week, comparing Victoria’s approach with NSW and finding it wanting.
“We don’t have these problems in NSW, they’re not happening in other cities, why is it happening in Melbourne?” said Scott Morrison who pointed out that NSW has a similar sized Sudanese population to Victoria.
Morrison implored Premier Daniel Andrews to ensure that the police force was a force, not a service. “When you don’t have that rule of law enforced in your community, people will take advantage of it,” he said. “My dad was a policeman and his proudest day was when Andrew Scipione (former NSW chief commissioner) changed the name back from police service to a force because he joined the police force when he was a young bloke. I think police forces should be exactly that.”
Others have mocked Victoria Police’s aversion to the word “gang” and the confusion of forming an African-Australian community taskforce to tackle high rates of crime while simultaneously rubbishing claims that there is an African gang crisis.
Ashton said after the Taylors Hill riot that the “traditional” label of a gang might confuse Victorians and make them think of people in leather jackets, such as the New York gangs of West Side Story.
And after police arrested 14 members of a gang last month in relation to armed carjackings and aggravated burglaries they said the group was not a gang but “a collective group of individuals who know each other”. If you look up the dictionary definition of “gang” it’s very close to what Victoria police claims is not a gang.
Decorated former homicide detective Ron Iddles this week called on police command to stop the spin and mixed messages.
“We have to get to the point of truth in policing,” Iddles said. “We have to actually identify the problem with street violence with certain people within the community … until you can come out with a clear articulated message and say we have a problem you won’t fix it.”
Police Association boss Wayne Gatt has called out police command’s reluctance to properly respond to officers’ concerns about the Collingwood event.
“They were aware there was significant potential for violence toward members and within rival groups,” he said.
“This is the sort of intelligence that should have thrown up alarm bells. If people are allowed to get away with actions as result of wild brawls, they are going to come back a third, fourth and fifth time. It’s not the fault of the police on the ground.”
Why didn’t command devote the officers needed to properly police the record label launch and then bill the event organisers? Police command have no qualms about sending exorbitant invoices to speakers addressing law abiding ticketholders monstered by Left wing activists but are curiously reluctant to bill event organisers whose patrons cause widespread damage.
So fearful are they of legal activists playing the race card they jeopardised public safety in the name of community engagement and political correctness.
There’s little doubt that the police force — sorry, service — in Victoria has been weakened and politicised. Christine Nixon may be long gone but her influence lingers on.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist.
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