Fears over youth gang violence as 40 knives seized each day in Victoria
More than 10,000 knives, daggers and swords have been seized in Victoria this year as police crack down on shops selling the weapons to youth gang members.
Victoria
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Police are seizing about 40 knives a day statewide as they prepare to crack down on rogue traders supplying weapons to youth gang members.
Victoria Police statistics obtained by the Herald Sun show the force has confiscated more than 115,000 in the past decade, including 10,378 knives, daggers and swords so far this year.
Longer, curved swords, known as “zombie knives”, have become a more recent target for police due to shop owners supplying the double-edged, serrated weapons to kids.
Victoria Police’s knife crime lead Commander Tim Tully said the number of stabbings involving youths had dropped, but police would not stop patrolling youth gang members.
“While youth gangs are involved in less than 10 per cent of all stabbings, we continue to give youth gang members no room to move as part of Operation Alliance, with regular bail compliance checks, search warrants, vehicle intercepts, and patrols where they hang out,” he said.
Police intelligence shows while adults were more likely to be involved in a stabbing than kids, about one in five stabbing assailants is a child aged between 10 and 17 years old.
That age group made up less than 10 per cent of stabbing victims.
Meanwhile, three in four stabbing victims have a criminal rap sheet of their own, and more than half of the total number of stabbings across the state unfold in residential settings such as homes, care facilities and boarding houses.
Commander Tully said officers uncovered most knives in these locations, making random stabbing attacks out in the community extremely unlikely.
“We want to reassure the community random stabbings are very rare,” he said.
“In fact, police intelligence shows that stabbings occur in around one per cent of all robberies and assaults.
“Our intelligence shows in many cases the offender and victim know each other.”
Just under 10 per cent of stabbings involve known youth gang members.
One police source said zombie knives and machetes were increasingly popular for youth offenders arming themselves for aggravated burglaries.
They had also been found with street gang members involved in crimes of violence.
“That’s what they’re carrying. They (zombie knives) are the buzz weapon at the moment. They’re evil-looking things … massive,” the source said.
Most of the zombie knives police come across are about 30cm long and actually placed at risk the young offenders who often stashed them in their pants.
“One wrong turn and you could nick an artery,” one officer said.
While the online sale of the weapons concerns police, there have been instances of zombie knives being sold over the counter in Melbourne stores.
A toy shop owner faced court in August accused of selling zombie knives and other dangerous items to known youth gang members in the Greater Dandenong area.
Zombie knives were among 400 weapons allegedly seized from Mazen Zaitoune in raids on his Boronia and Narre Warren stores, as well as a factory in Dandenong.
Mr Zaitoune faces 140 charges after a long investigation by Victoria Police’s Operation Alliance, which also allegedly uncovered samurai swords, butterfly knives, daggers, flick knives, imitation handguns, knuckledusters and axes.
A Victoria Police spokesman said the force conducted targeted patrols and arrested store owners to crack down on people allegedly selling zombie knives and machetes directly to youth gang members.
“We are also continually monitoring the online sale of edged weapons and providing any intelligence to Australian Border Force around the supply of illegal weapons into the country,” he said.
The Allan government brought in a bill to ban machetes in March, giving police new powers to stop businesses from selling them to youths and making it illegal for people to possess a machete without a lawful reason.
Family fears for their safety after knife incident
A Werribee mother says she fears for her family’s lives after suspected gang members brutally stabbed her son, before turning their weapons on her.
The mother, who has asked not to be named out of fear for her safety, told the Herald Sun a group of thugs, some brandishing machetes, surrounded her as she shopped at Werribee Plaza with several of her young children, including her 10-year-old daughter, on Monday last week.
“They followed me around and onto the bus with a knife,” she said.
The terrified mother claimed last week’s incident came after a group of knife-wielding teens repeatedly slashed her 15-year-old son after a dispute with some youths as he walked home from school in Werribee in February last year.
“They keep following us. They want to kill him (teenage son),” she said.
That assault left the young boy hospitalised with deep stab wounds to his knee.
“My son was in the hospital for a month,” she said.
His mother said she was so scared of reprisal attacks that she was planning to move house, and called for stricter patrols of people carrying weapons in the area.
It remains unclear exactly who was involved in each attack, but the mother claimed she recognised some of the young offenders involved in her son’s bloody assault.
Originally published as Fears over youth gang violence as 40 knives seized each day in Victoria
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