Four boys charged over Gippsland burglary

A 12-year-old is part of a group of five charged after an alleged home invasion and robbery in the state’s southeast.

Concerning new stastics reveal a frightening trend emerging among reckless kids

A 12-year-old is among four boys charged with an aggravated burglary in Gippsland.

The group, and a 34-year-old man, are accused of being armed when they approached a 65-year-old man in the backyard of his Marley St, Sale, home on January 24.

They allegedly marched the victim inside the property and demanded cash and his car keys, before driving off in the vehicle.

Police later pursued and recovered the car the next day in Lakes Entrance.

Wellington CIU detectives have charged a 12-year-old with aggravated home invasion, armed robbery, false imprisonment and going equipped to steal.

The other boys, aged 14, 15 and 16 are facing the same charges.

A 34-year-old Sale man was also charged and is expected to appear before the Bairnsdale Magistrates’ Court this afternoon.

It comes as violent robberies by the state’s youngest criminal offenders have surged by 85 per cent in five years.

Children aged 10-14 committed 305 such robberies in 2020, up from 164 in 2015, with worrying new evidence kids’ first offences are increasingly serious.

Deputy Commissioner ­(regional operations) Rick ­Nugent said first-time young offenders were now often committing violent crimes rather than low-level offences.

“We do know that first-time youth offenders are often committing serious and violent crimes, rather than easing into lower-level criminal offending as was previously the case,” Mr Nugent said.

Police were working with families and communities to try and divert young people from gang activity, he said.

Victoria Police’s Operation Alliance is committed to disrupting and dismantling street gangs responsible for serious and ­violent crimes.

“As part of this approach, police will continue to aggressively target recidivist youth ­offenders, bring them before the courts, and make sure they are held to account for their actions,” Mr Nugent said.

Victoria Police data also shows alarming increases in high-level “crime against the person” by those aged 10-14.

The data found kids are graduating straight to violent crimes.

Serious assaults by those children are running at more than one a day, jumping 15 per cent over five years to come in at 462 for the 12 months to September 2020. The number of common assaults committed by the same young age group soared from 510 to 633.

A greater willingness to physically take on the law emerged, with assaults on police, emergency service workers and authorised officers jumping from 39 to 65.

Mr Nugent said the wrongdoers only made up a small proportion of the youth population but police were committed to creating a safer community and supporting victims.

That included victims of aggravated robbery, with offending rates among teens aged 15 to 17 spiralling from 652 to 1122.

Common assaults jumped from 868 to 1319.

Some of the increases can be attributed to gang activity which leads to multiple offenders being charged with the same crime.

Melbourne’s western suburbs experienced the biggest rises in youth crime.

Children aged 10-17 were listed as alleged offenders in 916 criminal incidents in Brimbank in the year to September 2020, 313 more than in the previous year.

Wyndham’s jump was also steep, with a rise to 891 from 566.

The highest raw number was in the southeast suburban municipality of Casey where there were 1236 alleged offender incidents, a spike of 362.

Police have made inroads in recent weeks, with 11 teens ­arrested over two crime sprees involving aggravated burglaries, car thefts, robberies and driving matters.

Detectives from the southern metro region crime team arrested eight males aged 14 to 18 over a series of incidents, including the theft of two luxury cars in an aggravated burglary at Kew and subsequent armed robbery in Yarraville.

Four of them were detained as they tried to escape police by travelling at up to 200km/h on the Monash Freeway while being monitored by the police air wing.

In the second investigation, two boys aged 15 and a 14-year-old were arrested over incidents in Bendigo, Bentleigh, Blackburn, the Mornington Peninsula, Carrum Downs and Toorak.

A car stolen in Bendigo was found incinerated at Bentleigh and, days later, a car stolen from Toorak was used to ram a police car, narrowly missing several officers.

The boys arrested have been remanded in custody on charges of aggravated burglary and robbery.