Page 3341 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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As I was saying, the situation has improved at the Red Hill shopping centre, and it is because of an improved police presence. Hallelujah! The shopkeepers are saying that they see a police patrol about once a week, which is a big improvement on the previous situation. But it is still not good enough.
The elderly folk from St David’s and other nearby aged residences were regularly harassed for money, although I am advised that from June onwards this behaviour has improved quite dramatically. We must continue to monitor that situation. The harassment of the elderly folk walking between St David’s and the shopping centre and back again, people in their seventies and eighties, is despicable. If there is a priority that police need to particularly focus on, it is the protection of those people. They ought to be able to spend their last days enjoying their own neighbourhood. They should have that protection.
The police do have a good knowledge of who has been perpetrating the crime. They know the identities of the youths in that area who are engaging in disorder. I say again that the offenders in the Red Hill public housing complex are a small minority of the residents there, but they are aggressive beyond their numbers. They harass the peaceful, law-abiding majority of public housing tenants who live there, and they have a reach well out into the neighbourhood.
A good percentage of the perpetrators are youths who clearly are not influenced by police, the justice system or their elders. I must say that recently, at 3 pm one afternoon during a visit to a shopping centre, I witnessed young boys of about 10 and 12 years of age monstering and harassing shopkeepers and shoppers alike. They were not remotely fazed by the admonitions of nearby adults.
I noted that shopkeepers were not prepared to go out and admonish these young boys because of the fear of retribution later, usually after hours, and the visiting of vandalism on their shopfronts. The Maleganeas family, who own the Red Hill shops, have now had every single window broken in their supermarket. They have given up replacing broken windows with glass and have simply boarded the whole shop up. There is not a window in sight. That is pretty sad. That does not do anything for the amenity of the area or the amenity of the shop. Small business should be better off than that. The Maleganeas family are loath to undertake any further developments of the Red Hill shops under the current circumstances.
A proactive police presence has increased, as I was saying earlier, with some noticeable improvements in the area, but criminal activity remains high. About 10 days ago the butcher’s assistant told me that very often when he puts the garbage out at the end of the day, at about 5.00 to 5.30 pm he sees young men and teenage boys dealing at the corner of the Red Hill shops. That is in broad daylight; it is not even after dark.
The government has been well aware of this situation but has taken insufficient appropriate action in terms of policing and has not initiated firmer housing departmental action to deal with the recidivist unruly tenants. Yes, police patrols have increased, but more needs to be done. Police patrols in that shopping centre need to be further increased to tackle these sorts of issues. We welcome the initiative that the local police commander has taken to increase patrols, but more needs to be done. When the butcher’s assistant is
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