South-Eastern Metropolitan Region
Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:07): (1075) My question is to the Minister for Police, and I ask: with the recent Operation Trinity conducted over the past six months by Dandenong police in the Greater Dandenong, Cardinia and Casey areas, which saw the recovery of 1005 stolen vehicles at an estimated worth of $30.6 million, what is being done to provide police with resources to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place rather than providing the enormous resources needed to arrest the offenders? I applaud Victoria Police for resourcing 70 additional members to be rostered each night on top of the existing patrols, including frontline officers from highway patrol members, the dog squad, the public order response team and the air wing, to conduct Operation Trinity. The operation was obviously a resoundingly positive success, resulting in 1400 arrests for burglaries and car thefts. But what is particularly staggering in these figures is that 83 per cent of arrests involved youth below the age of 25 and 64.5 per cent below the age of 18. Premier Allan’s tired Labor government needs to look at the youth crime crisis in the south-east of Melbourne.