Youth crime scourge in Alice Springs grows
Despite last year’s intense focus, violence is still on the rise and few locals expect anything to change. CCTV does little to deter the gangs in search of cars to steal – including mine.
It’s 4am in Alice Springs and a gang of young men in a stolen ute is attempting burnouts in the middle of town.
Two of the occupants are hanging out of the rear windows with scarfs wrapped around their faces, one armed with a baseball bat.
The young driver isn’t having much luck pulling off a burnout but that doesn’t stop him careening wildly through roundabouts and across pavements.
When they notice The Australian taking photographs, they start making gang signs and set off firecrackers.
The police station is just one block away but the cops are nowhere to be seen.
The Australian has reported before on children as young as 10 driving stolen cars through town. But these aren’t kids and there’s an air of menace about them.
The baseball bat is a sign of an unwelcome but increasing trend in crime in the Territory. In the past five years, offences against the person have jumped by 37 per cent; property offences by 53 per cent.
Police have been particular targets of the violence, says NT Police Association president Nathan Finn, with an upsurge in offenders deliberately ramming police cars with stolen vehicles.
“This type of violent, reckless, dangerous offending is escalating, and our members want to know what is being done to ensure their safety,” Mr Finn said.
Yet in the past 10 years, he says, only 20 more police have been employed.
“The NT government has absolutely no idea what our members face day in, day out, and the senior police executive can only operate with the finite resources it has,” Mr Finn said.
Even judges and prosecutors have become victims.
One judge has been the target of multiple burglaries; recently, a local Crown prosecutor packed up and left town after being robbed in daylight on the street near her office.
Houses are attacked with golf clubs, assaults are carried out on joggers. Shopping malls have been left ghostlike. Store owners lock their doors even when they’re open.
Little more than a year ago, a national spotlight was placed on the town amid fly-in visits from Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, but the intense focus was vanishingly brief and the town is again awash in grog.
No one is surprised to hear that Mr Albanese, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney and Opposition Leader Mr Dutton, are all visiting again – and few expect anything to change.
Locals will continue to live in a state of constant hypervigilance.
Many homes are equipped with CCTV and motion-activated lights, but that does little to deter the gangs in search of cars to steal – including mine.
During several months reporting from Alice Springs over the past year, this reporter has sometimes stayed with baker Darren Clark – a fierce advocate for his town since violence and crime exploded following the lapse in intervention-era grog bans.
Last week, I was asleep, along with the other people in Clark’s house, when a group of boys discovered the back door hadn’t properly locked. The boys knew what they were looking for, ignoring my camera equipment and homing in on the car keys.
My rented Nissan X-Trail was gone; so too Clark’s Toyota.
“There’s so many of these young gangs now,” Clark says. “They’re not scared of a camera being on. If they don’t leave a print, they can’t be identified by their faces. They know they can’t be charged.”
For the past few years, Clark has been living in daily fear of burglary and violence. “I’d rather they steal my car, instead of waking up to the kids in my room, which has been happening more and more,” he said.
“The amount of stories I’ve heard where people have had machetes held to their throats and (their keys) being demanded, I’ve always left mine out on the bench in plain sight. You’re always on high alert, when we hear a noise or the dog barks or growls.
“You’re always on edge.”
The tragedy is that it is not only the victims of crime in grave danger. Late last week, local Aboriginal families were plunged into mourning after an 18-year-old youth died when the stolen Toyota HiLux he was riding in rolled and crushed him. It was stolen from a caravan park on the outskirts of town, driven through a boom gate and taken for a joy ride.
On Saturday Detective Senior Sergeant Brendan Lindner said eight youths fled the scene, leaving their friend to die on the footpath. “They showed a callous disregard for their critically injured friend and fled the scene, abandoning the 18-year old who was lying on the road in significant pain and unable to move while against the vehicle, which was billowing smoke following the crash,” Mr Lindner said.
The young man who died was facing two counts of driving and using a vehicle without consent, and had been before the courts on four separate occasions. He was also the father of two-month-old.
A war between families who want “payback” against the driver and those who fled the vehicle has begun. Over the weekend the victim’s family moved out of town.
