NT crime ‘reason to leave’

PROMINENT businessman and former NT Administrator John Anictomatis says a spike in property crime has had him consider upping stumps and leaving the Territory, which he says now resembles a lawless, Third World country.

Mr Anictomatis’s $18 million Rosebery Shopping Centre development was broken into for the fifth time in six weeks on Saturday night with thieves causing thousands of dollars in damage.

“I’ve lived here since I was nine years old, I love this place, but if I didn’t have family I would pack up and leave,” he said.

“How bad does it get before the politicians actually do something?

“I don’t want to hear these bullsh*t sob stories any more, we’ve got to get back to ‘you do the crime, you do the time’.”

Mr Anictomatis said if the government didn’t do anything to curb property crime rates, people would start taking the law into their own hands. Mr Anictomatis, a Vietnam War veteran, said he now felt more vulnerable in Darwin

“How bad does it get before the politicians actually do something”

than he did “in the jungle”.

“I’m so sad for what is happening to this town,” he said.

“You can’t go out walking at night, you go to sleep and you don’t know what you will wake up to.”

Official crime figures released on Friday afternoon showed commercial break-ins up 37.9 per cent in Palmerston compared to the previous year.

Commander James O’Brien said on Friday property crime across the Territory was down overall, and that Strike Force Trident — which investigates property crimes — had been given six new members.

“Frontline police officers continue to work tirelessly to prevent and investigate property crime,” he said.