Page 859 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 20 April 2021
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They say they have been consistently requesting a permanent police presence in the area, citing attendance times of well over an hour for callouts.
It goes on:
“We’ve been promised a police station in the Weston Creek town centre, but we’ve seen no plans and have no idea when it will be developed …”
The article continues:
“The police do arrive but it can be several hours later. But it’s not just the police at Woden. The police force has not grown with the Canberra population,” Tom says. “Not much money has been spent on police for a very long time.”
That was from the RiotACT. Those comments are certainly backed up by the experience that Mrs Jones and I had—and, no doubt, my other Murrumbidgee colleagues as well—when we were standing at Cooleman Court and other places when these unfortunate events were unfolding.
Members of the community were coming to us and saying, “Look, we are seeing police here for the first time in years.” Certainly, there was a big, strong police presence following that stabbing. It was notable because there had been such a lack of police in the area in the lead-up to that. That stabbing and a number of other incidents then led to a meeting that was held in the car park of a local school, where many members of the local community came down to list the concerns they had.
A common thread that you get when people are referring to these matters is that the police are just too busy—that people make the reports, but the police are stretched too thinly to do anything substantive. I think that goes to the clearance rates that we were talking about in question time. So these matters arise, complaints are made and people ring up. But, sadly, when you look at the clearance rates for all of those offences—and I will go through them a bit later—you find that we are just not seeing the response.
Many of us got an email—from looking at the list I think it may have gone to all members—from Donna. I have not met Donna, but I gave her a call the other day and she is happy for me to quote from the email that she sent. What she said to all of us is:
I’m sure you are already aware that Weston Creek has a massive problem at the moment, with a network of teenaged and young adults repeatedly committing criminal offences and not being held to account.
The lack of accountability and powerlessness of the community has given this group serious confidence that they will never get caught. They have a good understanding of how they can commit crimes without any risk of consequence.
She says:
… PLEASE, PLEASE help us solve this problem. People are terrified! Surely the law is not so powerless that this issue cannot be solved. Otherwise it’s only going to get worse.
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