Police focus on homes to pursue violent crims
GOLD Coast police are channelling the federal agents who brought infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone to justice, using similar tactics to bring down the city’s most dangerous criminals.
Where Capone was brought undone by tax fraud in the US in the 1930s, the Coast’s most violent offenders are being thrown behind bars on high-end criminal charges relating to horrific domestic violence offences.
The Gold Coast Domestic Violence Task Force is reminiscent of Eliot Ness’s Untouchables, using tactics outside of the box to lock up bikies, violent criminals and other offenders, by looking at what’s happening behind the door of their homes.
In recent months a number of the Coast’s most notorious criminals have been locked up, charged with criminal offences relating to domestic violence.
Detectives and plain clothes officers alike work on a “house of harm” edict, if an offender acts a certain way in public, using violence or stand-over tactics, it is likely they’ll be doing the same behind closed doors, harming their partner and a lot of the time, their children.
This edict hasn’t just happened overnight, it has taken years of trial and error for police to get to this point.
In the past, domestic violence has been an almost taboo subject, with police simply offering victims a chance to put in place domestic violence orders, reluctant to push for criminal charges.
Now, following a number of high-profile murders where domestic violence was a motive, the attitudes of officers on the ground, the new criminal charges and the domestic violence courts being brought in, has caused a major groundswell of change.
The man leading the Task Force, detective Inspector Marc Hogan, said police were learning on the run.
“The more we do in this ASST COMMISSIONER BRIAN CODD
area the more we learn about where to put resources and effort,” Insp Hogan said. “Much of that now relates to identifying people who represent high and extreme risk of violence and harm.
“In that sense we look at people who commit acts of violence and that can include things like stalking, strangulation, torture, those types of things, both behind the door and in front of the door.
“And connect that very much with risk assessments, in particular also around exposure of that to children and other vulnerable people.”
He said it was about identifying the traits in inherently violent people.
“If someone is prepared to act violently or demonstrate serious controlling behaviours at home or outside the home, you can probably, generally say it would be going on in both areas in a lot of cases.
“Some of these guys we know are attracted to other forms of anti-social behaviour, including outlaw motorcycle gangs and that type of thing.
“We are vigilant for those links and we know a lot more today than we did 12 months ago and a lot more than we did two years ago.”
The Coast’s top cop, Assistant Commissioner Brian Codd said this type of policing was about protecting victims from harm and potential death.
“The most dangerous place for vulnerable people, particularly women and children, here on the Gold Coast, isn’t on our streets at night, not in the safe night precincts, it’s behind closed doors in our suburbs and residential areas,” Mr Codd said.
“The process now is about zeroing in and highlighting high-risk potential offenders.
“By examining it we were finding other indicators ... of something that has a chance of deteriorating into a potential DV homicide and we’re intervening very, very solidly.
“The indicators are the strangulation offences and the nexus between people who end up being high-end DV offenders and other types of criminality.
“That’s something we’re still developing and learning.”
Insp Hogan said the changes were about accountability for the Queensland Police Service. “It’s about systems and people and accountability. It’s a combination of working together across government agencies and community sectors.
“It’s really important that domestic violence and violence towards children and vulnerable people be reported, because if we don’t see it, we can’t do anything about it.”
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