Bec Judd takes Bayside crime fight to Daniel Andrews

Businesswoman says she won’t be silenced by the Premier when it comes to her affluent Melbourne suburb and escalating crime.

Businesswoman and social media influencer Bec Judd lives in a multi-million dollar mansion in Brighton. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Businesswoman Bec Judd has declared she won’t be silenced when it comes to standing up for her Brighton community over escalating crime.

While the mother of four’s fears for the safety of her community were brushed off by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, Ms Judd, the wife of AFL great Chris Judd, doubled down on her concerns about crime on Tuesday.

“I’m glad my voice has shone a light on the escalating aggravated burglaries in Bayside,” she told The Australian.

“We are thankful for low non-aggressive crime rates, the increasing nature of home invasion-type crimes in our local community is what makes residents, particularly women, feel unsafe.

“I welcome Operation Ibis and the extra 500 police promised to the people of Victoria.”

Operation Ibis was launched by Victoria Police on Tuesday last week to target the wave of youth offenders committing crime in the area. A total of 14 offenders have been arrested and charged so far.

Over the past year, her affluent Bayside community has been subjected to a string of violent crimes, many at the hands of teenage boys unknown to the community, including a series of violent home invasions in recent months.

Bec and husband, former Carlton footballer Chris Judd. Picture: Fiona Hamilton/TENNIS AUSTRALIA

The community witnessed a 10-year high in aggravated residential burglaries last year with 105 recorded – four times that of 2014, according to Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency.

Ms Judd is the co-founder of activewear brand Jaggad.

Following a series of aggravated burglaries, as well as a string of media reports detailing attacks on children in local parks last year, the concerned mum posted to Instagram: “So sick of the rapes, bashings and home invasions at the hands of gangs in Bayside. The state government don’t seem to care. We feel unsafe.”

The Premier brushed off her comments as “sweeping assessments”.

“I’m not interested in having an argument with Ms Judd … I’m also obliged to point out, though, I think there are more than 70 additional police in the Bayside area, and the most recent crime statistics released by an independent agency would not support those sweeping assessments about patterns of crime,” he said.

Victoria Police confirmed the deployment the Premier was referring to had occurred across the Southern Metro Division in 2018, ending in 2021.

In March 2021, media reports highlighted the rape of a 16-year-old girl in a park after a party was crashed by a group of males who located it through Snapchat.

Only a few weeks later, three teenage boys were robbed and assaulted in neighbouring Sandringham by a group of male youths.

The incident was followed by the stabbing of a 17-year-old boy after he was confronted by 20 youths unknown to him and his friends in a Brighton park, and the assault of two 10-year-old boys by a group of teens carrying knives.

Ms Judd said in her social media post that recent home invasions have left the community, especially women, feeling “unsafe.”

Last week, a gang of teenage boys armed with knives attempted to steal the car of an 83-year-old Brighton man. Over the weekend, two boys aged 13 and 14 broke into a nearby property as a family slept and stole two cars.

Aggravated burglaries in the Bayside area, three of which occurred in a single week last month, numbered in the 90s in 2020 and 2021. Victoria Police linked the increase on population growth and an increase in Melburnians being inside their homes during the pandemic.

However, the numbers in Bayside show the two greatest spikes in aggravated burglaries in the past decade occurred between 2014 and 2015 when the number skyrocketed from 26 to 61, and 2018 and 2019 when a 53 per cent increase saw a rise from 64 to 98.

In neighbouring Glen Eira, residential aggravated burglaries remained relatively stable over the same period, while Port Phillip’s 2017 spike has since declined, despite greater population growth in both LGAs. Crime statistics for 2022 are expected to be released this month.

Local Area Commander Inspector Cath Wilkins said while the area had “seen a number of serious incidents recently, Bayside remains an overwhelmingly safe place to live”, assuring that police are regularly patrolling local streets throughout the evening.

While Inspector Wilkins acknowledged that there “has been an increase in offences recently”, she noted that communities were “coming off record lows due to the pandemic”.