Darling Downs youth crime numbers dropping but police say more work is needed

Across the district youth crime has dropped by about 16 per cent, one of the highest drops in the state, but our police are refusing to rest on their laurels and are calling for fresh ideas protect the community.

Darling Down police recorded a 16 per cent decline in youth crime in 2023, compared to the previous year, but the district’s senior officer said more work was needed to rein in teen offenders.

Along with the Far North District, this was the largest drop in youth crime for any district in Queensland.

In 2022 there were 5277 offences involving young people – a record for the district – but after rolling out a range of enforcement and prevention strategies, this number dropped to 4408 in 2023.

Those efforts included calling in Queensland’s roving youth crime squad, Taskforce Guardian, to clamp down on spikes in offending, while also deploying Polair and extra police patrols of shopping centres, parks and public transport under Operation Whisky Unison.

At the same time, the Youth Co-Responder teams that pairs police with Youth Justice case workers, conducted 2623 bail checks to ensure young offenders were at home and not on the street causing mayhem.

The teams have also clocked almost 3000 engagements with the families and guardians of at-risk youth to not only address the causes of their offending, but help them get access to counselling, drug and alcohol treatment, and housing.

Darling Downs District Officer Superintendent Doug McDonald said the downward trend in young people offending was a step in the right direction.

“We’ve still got more work to do and we recognise that from time to time when certain people are released from custody, we know we will have a spike in offences,” he said.

“We are very active in targeting those people very early to make sure that we keep the community safe.”

QPS Assistant Commissioner Charysse Pond and Superintendent Doug McDonald listen as Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk addresses media at the Toowoomba Police station, Friday, February 24, 2023. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Superintendent McDonald welcomed plans by the state government to expand the use of metal detecting wands to help police find knives, and the proposed expansion of GPS trackers on young people.

“Under the current legislation, we can only use wanding in the Safe Night Precinct in the CBD and pleasingly we’ve only detected one knife during those operations,” he said.

“It is good that it could be expanded to other areas, particularly shopping centres, and public transport systems, where there is intelligence to suggest that there may be knives.”

The figures were released 12 months after 75-year-old Robert Brown died from a critical head injury when he was allegedly pushed over during an alleged robbery in front of Grand Central Shopping Centre.

Community frustrations boiled over at a fiery forum held in the wake of the tragedy but led the state pouring resources into the Darling Downs.

On Friday the Queensland Parliament Youth Justice Reform Committee will meet in Toowoomba and take submissions from the public about how to best address youth crime.

Superintendent McDonald is set to convene a second roundtable meeting with community groups, sport clubs and non-government organisations to source fresh ideas about community-led strategies.

“These strategies are not just a set and forget type of approach – we’re continually evolving them,” he said.

“There’s no doubt that our officers are working very hard and diligently every day to bring these offenders to justice and to keep the community safe.

“Our officers are tired, they feel stressed and it is a tough environment to work in.

“But I’m proud to say that they turn up every day to keep this community safe and do an excellent job and I think the way the crime rate is going is a testament to their hard work, to the investigators that clear up offences, to our crime prevention teams that are preventing offences, and our general duties officers that work across those whole gambit of strategies.”