Steve Price: Police Commander Wayne Cheesman spoke for us all when he said he was ‘fed up’

As I sat in a bar looking at Little Bourke St, riot police ran by with helmets and face shields, bulletproof vests, weapons, pepper spray and stun grenades. Melbourne has become a joke.

This is Melbourne every weekend.

I was in the CBD for lunch with tourist friends from overseas and all the trams were blocked from the Swanston St arterial both ways.

Police Commander Wayne Cheesman has become the second senior police chief in recent weeks to speak out in frustration against the crime crisis and constant weekend protest rallies.

There are constant protests in Melbourne. Picture: David Crosling

At the corner of Bourke and Exhibition streets I shook hands with a couple of blue-rubber-gloved police on a road-blocking barrier, frustrated their weekends were not spent chasing crooks but rather having rocks thrown at them.

Sunday in our city was more than ugly.

At the Flinders St Station intersection, with Palestinian flags flapping in the wind next to the Indigenous flag, a small group of people was sitting on the ground blocking traffic and trams.

Why?

Police are frustrated their weekends were not chasing crooks but having rocks thrown at them. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Sunday in our city was more than ugly. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Sunday’s so-called anti-racism rally was simply the pro-Palestine crowd by a different name with smaller numbers.

As Cheesman said, “we have had enough”, and we are “fed up”.

You know what? That goes for all of us.

I could not believe the police resources I saw deployed to these two rallies on Sunday.

Hundreds of uniformed street police, the mounted squad, and as I sat in a bar looking at Little Bourke St, riot police ran by with helmets and face shields, bulletproof vests, weapons, pepper spray and stun grenades.

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Victoria is in the middle of a teenage crime crisis, plus a tobacco arson war, and we allow this madness to shut down a city of five-plus million weekend after weekend.

Melbourne has become a national and international joke – an embarrassing global example of a major city led by a woke, weak and hopeless state government too scared to take back control.

To see it up close as I did on Sunday is very sad.