Victoria Police chief commissioner Shane Patton says ‘post and boast’ youth crime number one focus
Victoria Police chief commissioner Shane Patton says offending by young people is the force’s No.1 focus — and one particular evolution among this cohort is deeply troubling.
Police & Courts
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Chief Commissioner Shane Patton says tackling child crime is police’s biggest priority as youngsters now commit serious crimes such as aggravated burglary as a first offence.
Victoria’s top cop said in the age of “post and boast” those aged under 18 were now beginning their criminal careers with high-level offending.
“That’s the concern for us with what we are seeing now,” he said.
“Traditionally, the first time we’ve seen them might have been a theft from a shop or something, whereas now it can be an aggravated burglary, which is pretty amazing.”
Mr Patton said detectives had arrested 1450 children for aggravated burglary but the disturbing crime continued.
He said smashing youth gangs was the biggest focus.
“It’s obviously very concerning for us,” Mr Patton said.
“This is our biggest area of focus, the biggest area of concern for us at the moment in terms of crime, because the community needs to feel safe, as well as being safe.”
Mr Patton said about 600 children were involved in 40 to 44 gangs statewide.
“A lot of it is notoriety, it’s the post and boast generation and making themselves out to be significant,” he said.
“We’ve seen through Operation Trinity that we recover 95 per cent of the cars that have been stolen in those agg burgs, so they are obviously just doing it for the fame.”
Mr Patton said police had successfully got up to 200 children out of gangs but the 600 were a core group they had been unable to divert.
The force was against the age of criminal responsibility increasing, but he welcomed the Premier’s announcement it would not be raised to 14 years old as initially planned.
“Locking up people is part of it, but the other part is actually engaging with the families, engaging with the kids, their siblings, trying to understand the root cause of it, trying to get them help so that they don’t go into the criminal justice system,” Mr Patton said.
“That’s been a focus of ours for a while. We’ve had huge increases in our cautioning and diversion processes so it is a two-phase approach.
“There’s the big stick, where kids or anyone is committing offences need to be locked up … but also, it’s trying to divert them from crime, and the younger we can get to them to do that, the better.”
TOBACCO WARS
The force was also “throwing everything” at the syndicates waging war over the illicit tobacco trade, and the 40-detective Taskforce Lunar was making inroads.
Mr Patton said 75 firebombings had been linked to the conflict since March last year. Police had made 80 arrests.
“A couple of them have been the co-ordinators of what has been going on,” he said.
“Unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped, though. The market is so lucrative and attractive in terms of the money they can make through illegal imports.
“But we now have a really good appreciation of the environment and we’ve locked up quite a few.”
Mr Patton said he would like the state government to introduce a tobacco licensing scheme.
“Victoria Police doesn’t want to be in the space of charging someone for having a single vape or something like that,” he said. “That’s not for us. But where the intersection between organised crime making lots of money out of illicit tobacco or vapes, that’s where we want to be involved.”
PAY DEAL
Mr Patton will meet Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt this week to restart pay negotiations after officers rejected a nine-day working fortnight and a 16 per cent pay rise over four years.
He said it was “uncharted territory” and he was waiting to hear the union’s position.
Asked if the nine-day fortnight would be scrapped, he said: “We obviously need to sit down with the association and I’m not going to speculate what is on and what’s off the table. I want to hear from them first about what they propose.”
He said both parties wanted the best for officers.
“We want to look after them, we want them to be well remunerated, we want them to have good conditions but it also has to be with an understanding of what our current fiscal environment is,” Mr Patton said.
ROAD TOLL
“Road to zero is still the goal, but it seems a long, long way from that at the moment,” a dejected Mr Patton sighed.
There have been 180 lives lost on our roads this year – five more than at the same time last year.
“And last year was our worst year since 2008 – it’s horrendous,” he said.
Police achieved three million breath tests in the past financial year and would match that, or better it, this year. And “the theatre of policing” was key.
“For us, it is about visibility,” Mr Patton said. “It’s about seeing those blue lights out there and pulling people over and people realising they could be pulled over.
“It’s what’s referred to internally as the theatre of policing because it is theatre. If people see there’s a chance they might get pulled over then often they will change their driving behaviour.”
He said Monash Freeway booze buses in which one in every 72 drivers tested positive for alcohol were “insane”.
“It’s an insane statistic, but they are not statistics, they are people who are breaking the law and putting others at risk of death,” he said
He added: “There’s no single fix in this. If there was, we would do it tomorrow. It’s about personal responsibility.”
RESOURCES
Victoria Police has about 700 members of staff on long-term sick leave and 700 vacancies yet to be filled.
Mr Patton said there was a “large exodus” after Covid and some stations would have to continue to close at night.
“There are 600 or 700 still on WorkCover, predominantly with mental health illness, which is an absolute tragedy,” he said.
“It’s a cumulative impact of a number of years. We are trying to prevent that from happening. We are trying to provide that support for our members and the managers to prevent them getting ill in the first place because policing is really challenging.”
CFMEU
Police will decide in the next two weeks whether to investigate the militant union.
It comes after it was revealed outlaw motorcycle gang members and other criminals had infiltrated Big Build worksites.
Mr Patton said the allegations were unsurprising.
“That didn’t surprise me, I have to say. You’d have to be under a rock if you didn’t think bikies weren’t engaged with that type of activity,” he said.
He added: “But we’ve had the matters referred to us by the Premier and so we are conducting an assessment of that, we will finish that assessment in the next week or two and we’ll determine whether there is any investigation.”
PROTESTS
About 13,000 officers have been forced to police more than 460 pro-Palestine protests since October last year.
Mr Patton said it had been a huge drain on resources.
“We’ve had Covid and then fraying of social cohesion from the Hamas-Israel conflict that commenced last year tying up 13,000 police in over 460-odd protests, just in relation to that conflict alone, which is pretty amazing.
“When that resolves, when we are able to free up those resources, that will allow us to do what we want to do.”
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