BAD HOON RISING
EXCLUSIVE: Fed-up cops hauling tinnie rats as young as 14 before the courts
TINNIE hoons aged as young as 14 are standing before magistrates and being given community service as part of a tough-love blitz on the city’s waterways.
And fed-up cops aren’t apologising for it.
“We’re hard line with this,” said Gold Coast Water Police acting senior sergeant Mitch Gray. “If we don’t step in these kids could end up killing themselves.”
A number of teenage hoons have fronted court on the back of the two-month Operation Whitewater, where hundreds of boaties were pulled over for speeding and tested for alcohol and drug use.
Magistrates have given school-aged hoons 80-hour community service sentences to help get the message across. Other deterrents include the confiscation of boats and mediation with angry residents.
TEENAGE tinnie hoons aged as young as 14 are being hauled before magistrates and given community service as part of a tough-love blitz on the city’s waterways.
And fed-up cops aren’t apologising for it.
“We’re hard line with this,” said Gold Coast Water Police acting senior sergeant Mitch Gray. “The dangerous behaviour is completely unacceptable. If we don’t step in these kids could end up killing themselves.”
A number of teenage hoons have fronted court on the back of the two-month Operation Whitewater, where hundreds of boaties were pulled over for speeding and tested for alcohol and drug use.
The crackdown was an air and sea operation.
Magistrates have given school-aged hoons 80-hour community service sentences to help get the message across.
Other deterrents include confiscation of boats and mediation with angry residents.
“If we deem their driving is unsafe or dangerous they can expect a day in court,” Sen Sgt Gray said. “It was one of the largest water police operations we’ve ever put together.”
For years, police have been at loggerheads with young tinnie rats ignorantly blasting through the city’s canals.
They have tried writing letters and visiting parents, but this time decided to take a tough-love approach and called for the public to dob in speedsters. Canals off the Nerang and Coomera rivers are noted hotspots, police said.
Sen Sgt Gray said boaties could expect regular blitzes over holiday periods to stamp out the “tinnie basher” subculture of hooning.
He said police would continue to target teens and their parents who disguise tinnies powered by 15 horsepower engines as having six horsepower motors, which don’t require boat licences to operate.
“We don’t want to knock on anyone’s door and say ‘sorry, your son’s been killed’. We’re all parents ourselves and we don’t want to see that.”
Sen Sgt Gray said police had started working with Maritime Safety Queensland by issuing show cause notices to offending boat owners and license holders. Sen Sgt Gray said juvenile offenders were also being brought into “youth justice conferences” where residents “decide a punishment”.
He said a popular punishment included making young offenders take boat licensing courses, at added cost to parents.
A concerned Surfers Paradise resident, who did not wish to be named, on Sunday photographed a group of hoons she described as being “aged between 12 and 15”.
“It’s just disrespectful. Their parents should be pulling them up because they're obviously the ones who get the boats for them. Normally, I don’t complain but it’s been happening so much I’ve started taking photos but some just turn and give you the finger. They tow each other on surfboards behind the boats – the areas has a speed limit of 6 knots with no wash.”
Sen Sgt Gray said the group was being investigated after police received six complaints.
“All we ask for is details, the time, date, location, registration numbers with a brief description. If you can take a photo it speaks a thousand words because we can go straight to Policelink and upload it – that’s the beauty of live reporting.”
THE tough police stance on tinnie rat runners, while well overdue, is to be applauded.
Fed-up cops are putting brazen canal hoons before magistrates to teach the teens and their families the danger of ignorantly zipping through the city’s waterways, many of them without lifejackets.
A two-month blitz on Gold Coast waterways resulted in more than 900 boaties being tested for alcohol and drugs, and young hoons being targeted.
And they are not being let off lightly with teenagers as young as 14 being given community service and forced to sit their boating licence, at added cost to parents.
Authorities have been at loggerheads with teen hoons for many years and tried countless measures.
In 2016, frustrated police went to the lengths of sending letters to the homes of offenders and then — with suspicions the joyriders might be intercepting the mail before their mums and dads read the warnings — knocking on doors to alert parents.
Months after, police realised brazen teens were skirting the engine-limit laws by fitting six horsepower covers on 15 horsepower motors. People of any age are permitted to control a tinnie powered by a six horsepower engine.
With the Gold Coast canal system stretching further than that in Venice and more people using our waterways than ever before, the irresponsible actions of tinnie hoons can have dire consequences.
As the effective blitz on drink driving on our roads showed, tough-love policing provided significant deterrents.
The young hoons may not love the punishment being delivered by police, but they’ve had enough warning.
The approach will save lives and no one should apologise for that.