Violent crime soars
Ice scourge blamed for shock figures
CRIME rates are “out of control” on the Gold Coast but the Glitter Strip can only expect to get five new police recruits before Christmas.
The 2016-17 annual statistical review released by the Queensland Police Service yesterday confirmed big increases in violent offences contrasted by a fall-off in drug arrests and good order offences.
The Government announced five new young police recruits will be placed on the Coast yet other crime hot spots like Townsville (15) and the Far North Region (18) are to get more.
The South Eastern Region – which includes Logan and the Coast – recorded an 85 per cent increase in “other homicide” offences.
“These are your stabbings, your attempted murders. It’s all the high range violence,” a police source said.
The Coast-Logan region had the highest increase in grievous assault at 19 per cent, with only Brisbane (11 per cent) having a large number of offences in the category.
Common assault was up by 20 per cent, almost double the increase of any other policing region in the State.
Other key signs of the drug culture included a 41 per cent increase in unarmed robbery and staggering 80 per cent boost in unlawful entry relating to shops.
“It’s all about drugs. It’s the need for greed for drugs. There’s a link between robberies and break and enters and the need to obtain money and drugs,” the source added.
“The drug culture is so bad you’re tripping over it on the corners of the street.”
Coast civic leaders in July called on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Police Commissioner Ian Stewart to solve the soaring crime rate before the Commonwealth Games in April next year.
The embarrassing figures occurred against a backdrop of the Crime and Corruption Commission investigating the fudging of crime data and the domestic violence deaths of nine women since 2014, including the brutal murders of Tara Brown and Teresa Bradford.
Opposition police spokesman Tim Mander yesterday told the Bulletin: “Crime rates under Annastacia Palaszczuk are out of control because Labor is soft on crime. Drug and violent crime is increasing and the criminal gangs coming back to the Gold Coast.”
While senior Coast police maintained the crime rate was reducing, Bond University criminologist Terry Goldsworthy maintained this was misleading. “Where we have seen crime decrease is in the area of police enforcement with other offences, which are indicative of proactive policing decreasing significantly,” he said.
“The silence from senior management to respond to the increasing crime rate has been deafening. There have been no clear strategies put forward to acknowledge the cause, nor the solution to the current situation Queensland finds itself in with regards to the crime rate.”