Deadline: Victoria Police raises eyebrows with ‘leftist scum’ retweet
Victoria Police raised some digital eyebrows this week by retweeting some unwanted acclaim for dealing with a bunch of anti-Israel docks protesters.
Police & Courts
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Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.
Oops!
Artificial intelligence is sometimes a bit of a misnomer.
Like when Victoria Police this week retweeted unwanted acclaim for dealing with a bunch of anti-Israel docks protesters.
“Well done @Victoriapolice for fighting against the leftist scum,” the force’s official account echoed.
A follow-up tweet was posted later saying the message was inappropriate and had been deleted.
“Please, rest assured this was an entirely accidental human error using moderation software,” the VicPol clarification said.
Meaning, it probably wouldn’t have happened if a human was on the case.
Having a stab at the socials
What’s the first thing you do when badly wounded by some armed scumbag out in the street?
Well, it seems calling an ambulance still comes out on top, loosely followed by getting on Instagram and posting a pic of your injuries.
When Fink-linked Ugur “Pasha” Okanlar was stabbed near his Southbank apartment last week, the news emerged as quickly as the paramedics.
The burly Okanlar was barely in the back of their van when he posted a pic of his injuries on Insta.
“Stabbed in the leg first thing in the morning WTF he wrote.”
Deadline, always at the cutting edge of social media trends, pondered whether this might be the next big thing.
When he was wounded in a cemetery ambush a couple of years ago, underworld survivor Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim got on the socials from his hospital bed
He posted a pic of himself full of bullet-holes, having narrowly avoided a one-way trip to the big kickboxing ring in the sky.
In 2017, gangland identity Mohammed Oueida had to satisfy himself with text messages after being shot outside a north suburban mosque.
He fired off an SMS from his hospital bed to a man he quite reasonably believed to be responsible.
“Hey dog lucky you c.... are shit shots LOL,” Oueida wrote.
RBF claim was BS
A journo with a squinting face of concentration copped a whack from a magistrate when he drew attention to her “unhelpful” expression.
Magistrate Andrew Sim called a halt on a Melbourne Magistrates Court hearing when he took issue with whatever the journalist’s face was doing.
Herald Sun court reporter Ashley Argoon was looking toward fluorescent lights that hung above the magistrate’s head, trying to follow legal argument in a suppression fight when His Honour suddenly interrupted proceedings.
“You obviously disagree with what I’m saying, you’re making a facial expression which is very unhelpful,” he said, according to a lawyer that was in court 3.
A journalist from The Age says the magistrate then added, “I find it distracting.”
We can’t confirm this with Argoon’s notes because she has none of this interaction, such was her surprise.
She blundered in reply something like, “My sight isn’t great and I’m just trying to concentrate.”
Argoon is now seeking guidance on how to make her face less unhelpful.
Doc’s daughter made of stern stuff
This column’s authors are big fans of the one and only Dr Turf, aka John Rothfield.
So, we were sorry to hear last week that the punting media man and his family had become the latest Melburnians to fall victim to the kind of out-of-control teenagers who have been a blight on our city for some years.
The Doc was taking a holiday in northern New South Wales last week when a group broke into his Armadale hacienda, along with several other properties in the area.
His daughter woke to find a torch shining in her eyes in the dead of night, an experience which must have been quite terrifying.
Rothfield enlightened SEN radio listeners about what had happened when he appeared on Off the Bench last Saturday as part of the station’s 20th anniversary.
The intruders were in his house for up to 30 minutes, during which time one of them assured his daughter that, “we don’t touch women.”
In any case, his quick-witted girl was able to quickly build some rapport to the point where she was called a “sick four-letter word”, which is apparently some kind of compliment.
“She’s a tough kid,” the Doc said.
Despite being a noted hard-marker, Rothfield had some complimentary words for the boys in blue and their treatment of his daughter.
“They’ve been so great and supportive of her. A big thanks to the coppers,” he said.
Unfortunately, the vehicles didn’t come out of the ordeal as well as Turf Junior.
It sounds like the screen might be pulled around at least one of them after it got a thrashing from the Hungry Jacks-munching hoodlums.
Rothfield had some free crime prevention advice for homeowners about the importance of locking doors and windows.
He reckons a faulty lock enabled the group entry and that, had it not been open, they would have moved onto the next house.
Crims hot-footed it
Our ever-vigilant colleague Athos Sirianos could have gained the impression that crime is out of control in Doncaster.
Sirianos was a couple of streets from the scene of the murder of Doncaster doctor Ash Gordon this month when fresh offenders emerged.
“I was sitting in my car, parked at Malcolm Crescent, when I saw two guys aged approximately 18 to 20, all hooded-up and covering their faces, burst out of a block of units and started running towards me.
Sirianos started filming them as they ran past before speaking to the police.
As the footage shows, one of them was in such a hurry to get away that he had no shoes on.
“One of the coppers then went over to the house and spoke to the owner. Turns out the kids didn’t take anything because they got caught. One of the crooks stacked it and left his shoes there,” Siranos tells us.
Property scams out of tune
Craig Heath is a Melbourne musician whose social media is full of inspirational messages of positivity and independence.
His Instagram account – modestly titled craigheathofficial – has life-guiding slogans pulled from the internet such as RULE NUMBER ONE. FORGET WHAT THEY THINK.
That might be just as well for Mr Heath because it seems he has been in the thoughts of police a bit of late.
Last weekend, it was revealed that he had allegedly fleeced victims of almost $10 million, via some shady property investment scams.
It was alleged that a single mum with an autistic son lost $200,000 and that a 68-year-old pensioner dropped $700,000.
Mr Heath is accused of being active in Beaumaris, Bentleigh, East Brighton, Toorak and Murrumbeena.
Cardinia CIU detectives are also looking into his approaches to single women in the Malvern East.
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