Tarneit teens say ‘We’re not doing anything wrong’

THERE were five African teens wandering around the trashed community centre at Tarneit. One had a point to make: The police and the public are getting it all wrong. But few locals would agree.

THERE were five African teens wandering around the trashed community centre at Tarneit late on Tuesday.

They walked together round the block, again and again, smoking cigarettes and scuffing their feet.

But in a week when their community had made national news, one had a point to make.

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The boy, 15, didn’t want to be identified, but said the police and the public were getting it all wrong.

“Nobody tells our side of the story,” he complained.

“We’re not doing anything wrong.”

They were constantly targeted by the police for no good reason, another said.

The youth crime wave wasn’t real, piped a third.

But few Tarneit locals would agree.

Police talk to African youths outside Ecoville Community Park in Tarneit.

Police patrol the trashed Ecoville Community Centre. Picture: Nicole Garmston

One said the area had been bedevilled by the gangs for more than a year.

“This has been going on for ages and no one has wanted to know,” he said.

Another concerned father, whose son was accosted by a group of African teenagers in an attempted robbery, said he would tell his friends not to vote for Labor at the next election if the government did not stand up and “get tough on the thugs”.

Michael Paul said there was a “new undercurrent in the west”, and many locals feared their community would be terrorised in the same way Tarneit had been.

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Michael Paul says there is a “new undercurrent in the west”. Picture: Nicole Garmston

“People are talking all the time, you walk down to the town centre and it’s the No. 1 topic,” he said.

One former veteran police officer there had been a lack of planning and co-ordination in settling refugees in the area for years.

“We just plonk them out in suburbia and say: ‘good luck guys’,” the officer said.