Thursday, 17 October 2024

Police resources

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (17:18): (873) My adjournment tonight is for the Minister for Police, and the action I seek is that the minister works to provide more police resourcing, particularly active patrol vehicles for the City of Glen Eira, and specifically within the Caulfield area.

A few weeks ago my wife was contacted by local neighbours that were getting together a WhatsApp group to talk about the escalation of youth crime, particularly around home invasions that had happened around our area. We have seen a number of incidents that have got to a particular point where a number of our local residents, not just in my street but in neighbouring streets, are putting together funding for private patrols because they do not feel safe. There was an incident only about three or four weeks back where a family with four young girls had six teenagers break into their home in the middle of the night. Mum and Dad were away, and these girls were sleeping. Thank God they were not woken during that time. There were, I believe, five vehicles – it could have been six vehicles ‍– that were stolen. All of the four girls’ and mum’s and dad’s vehicles were stolen from this particular house. What then transpired is police were chasing one of these vehicles and tracked it back to the home, only to initially think that it was one of the kids that was driving recklessly. They came into the bedroom of the girls that were still sleeping, at about 4 am in the middle of the night, and interrogated these girls, only to find out that it was stolen through a home invasion.

This is not uncommon. This is something that we are hearing time and time again. Local residents feel so unsafe – I understand there are three active patrol groups in areas just around my area, and a fourth is now being set up – and all of these residents are saying to themselves, ‘Why don’t we have more active police patrols? Why is it that we have to have a situation where we are paying private security guards to actively patrol our streets?’ These people pay their taxes like everybody else. Why is it that on top of that they are having to take more money to have patrols of their homes because they and their kids do not feel safe?

I do call on the Minister for Police. I would be happy to introduce him to many of these groups that are calling for this. Ultimately we have one patrol vehicle for 150,000 residents in Glen Eira. It is not enough. We have got to get more active police patrols. We have got to ensure that residents feel safe no matter where they are and no matter where they live. It is simply not good enough that residents have to take things into their own hands because this government is failing them.