Woodroffe crime: Residents make their last stand amid invasion by out of control thugs
Attempted dog stabbings, brick and rock missiles, riots, torched vehicles – this Palmerston suburb is under siege. But harried locals are determined to wrest back control from thuggish interlopers.
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A grandmother who sent her dog away because of attempts to stab her beloved pet through her back fence to stop its barking.
A mother and daughter cowering in their kitchen as they awaited a burning vehicle to explode.
Used needles sprouting in backyards like toxic mushrooms.
Homeowners getting by on as little as two hours of sleep a night and arriving zombified to work the following day, if they arrive at all.
These are some of harrowing stories shared by Woodroffe residents at an urgent community meeting at Emery Ave on Thursday night following two-and-a-half weeks of threats, projectiles, violence and unrest afflicting their street and neighbouring Sibbald Crescent.
Both streets are home to a number of dated social housing blocks that have become the front line of a suburban war tearing the fabric of the community apart as if it were made of tulle.
No-one really knows where the interlopers came from – the locals believe Wadeye.
All they know is that they arrived around the time of the Darwin Show and have been causing mayhem ever since.
The final straw for besieged residents occurred on Wednesday night, when a disturbance of up to 20 people at Sibbald Cres resulted in a Ford Fiesta being set alight after being rammed by a stolen Toyota LandCruiser.
Eyewitnesses told this masthead the rioters tore apart temporary traffic signs to arm themselves with metal bars to attack the Ford Fiesta, which they say contained up to six occupants, including women and children.
Those closest to the carnage still have the sound of metal on metal ringing in their ears.
Despite being called with only about six hours’ notice, the community meeting was attended by approximately 50 locals, as well as politicians and candidates including Mark Turner MLA, Clinton Howe, Matthew Kerle and Dani Eveleigh.
Meeting convener Al Johnstone, a long-term resident of Emery Ave, gave a Napoleonic oration to the motley crowd of public servants, young renters, welfare recipients and tradies.
“This mob here have made me sleepless for 15 nights,” he said, waving around a rolled cigarette for emphasis.
“Screw ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, we’re sleepless in Woodroffe.
“This joint has been a war zone. With the rubbish going on next door, we’ve rang the police forty to fifty times in the last couple of weeks.
“They’ve shown up maybe half a dozen times.”
It had become clear to him, he said, that residents needed to take matters into their own hands – although Mr Johnstone made it clear he was not talking about vigilantism.
“Something’s going to start now. We as a community will make a wave,” he said.
“As of today, the war starts.
“Let’s turn Woodroffe back into a good community, a family friendly place where we can all feel safe.”
Together, the community agreed to work towards a number of strategies to help wrest back control of their neighbourhood from the dark forces seeking to turn it into a wild west.
It was agreed that there would be a petition distributed around the neighbourhood and canvassed at political offices and shopping centres; that residents should make an extra effort to know their neighbours and exchange phone numbers; and that all instances of social disorder should be documented so that an undeniable case can be made to Territory Families, Housing and Communities (TFHC) that certain social housing tenants are in breach of their agreements.
At times, the meeting veered perilously closed to racial opprobrium – but Robyn Ober, an Indigenous academic who resides at Sibbald Cres, put such dark thoughts to bed with a moving cri du coeur.
“It doesn’t come down to race, it comes down to good people,” she told the meeting.
“We shouldn’t be hiding in our kitchen and being afraid.
“We are all in this together.
“Let’s be careful of this ‘us and them’.
“We’ve got good people throughout Sibbald and Emery, but we’ve got bad people coming in and taking over our community.”
Ms Ober told this masthead the house she shares with her son, daughter Keisha, and dog, was right next to where the Ford Fiesta was attacked and incinerated.
“Me and my daughter, we heard a loud banging but we didn’t know what it was,” she said.
“We turned the TV off and looked outside to see a group of men just smashing into the red car (the Fiesta).
“Another truck (the LandCruiser) comes along and barges the car towards the bus stop. I screamed.
“A few minutes later we heard the popping off of explosions.
“I thought the whole thing was going to blow and shatter our windows.”
Childcare worker Rachael Howes, the grandmother whose dog was nearly stabbed while on her property, said she has been threatened with a shovel, had rocks and bricks pelted at her unit, and had her sprinkler lines cut in the last fortnight.
“I didn’t go to work last week because I was fully depressed,” she said, her voice cracking.
“I’m f---ing suicidal.
“My grandkids don’t even want to come here anymore. What the f--- is that?”
Ms Howes said what was particularly galling about Wednesday night’s riot was that she had reported the destroyed Fiesta to police “easily five times” over the course of the previous fortnight.
“We warned police numerous time regarding drink-driving, overloading. The car was defectible – it had a headlight out.
“It should never have happened.”
Naturopath Kristy Howell, a Sibbald Cres resident of nine years, said locals had lost faith in an overstretched police force’s ability to respond to all but the most serious of criminal behaviour.
“First you call the cops every night, then you call them occasionally, then you give up,” she said.
Mr Turner, the Blain MLA, told the meeting he would extend an invitation to NT Police Commissioner Michael Murphy and a senior TFHC bureaucrat to meet with locals.
He also advised those gathered that they had a right to bring a tribunal case against offending tenants under s100 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1999, but that it was a time-consuming and convoluted strategy with no guarantee of success.
On Wednesday – the day before the riot – Mr Turner wrote to TFCH chief executive Emma White, Police Minister Brett Potter, Mr Murphy and Housing Minister Ngaree Ah Kit to say his community was reaching breaking point.
“We are facing multiple fights, cars hooning around, and numerous instances of criminal damage to private properties, including random smashing of fences,” he wrote.
“This situation has disrupted peace completely; our community cannot go to sleep at night and does not feel safe to go outside.
“The urgency cannot be overstated; I’ve attached the video footage.
“We are not making this up.”
Midway through the meeting, three police units, a Public Order Response Unit and a public housing safety unit pulled up outside the worst offending social housing block, beside the unit complex where the meeting was being held.
They were there for all of 30 seconds. No officers exited the vehicle – and like that, they were gone.
An act of solidarity, perhaps, a small reminder that officers were doing all they could in straitened circumstances – and it is important to note not a single attendee assigned blame for the situation to NT Police.
Towards the end of the meeting, this masthead was alerted to a development at Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, which is located on Emery Ave.
The Parents and Friends neon disco had been cancelled due to “unforeseen circumstances”.
Everyone knew what the circumstances were: a fear that lights and music would attract the interlopers as sure as honey attracts flies.
A parent said Sacred Heart was a “school full of shattered kids”.
Long-time residents of Woodroffe can remember a time when the suburb swarmed with children walking home from school and riding bikes in the streets after the final bell rang.
They don’t do that anymore.