Thursday, 31 October 2024

Western Victoria Region

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (12:58): (1216) My question for the Minister for Police concerns the troubling and recently tragic rise in crime in Geelong streets. Stats from the year ending 30 June 2024 were released last month. I had planned to raise the 10 per cent rise in car theft and the skyrocketing retail robberies, which exploded from 1087 cases in 2023 to 1536 in 2024 – a 41 per cent increase – but these numbers now seem trivial after the fatal stabbing last weekend of 20-year-old Corio barber Jayme Sykes. One local business owner said:

I’m not surprised that something has happened, there was a glassing last weekend just around the corner, it’s happening all the time …

And:

The cops are doing nothing about it …

Minister, what are you doing to get a grip on the spiralling crime on Geelong streets, which last weekend so tragically cost a young life?