Break and enters breaking hearts across our community
RECENTLY Mrs J and I had some lovely friends over for dinner, and with COVID-19 on the increase, Tokyo Olympics looming and the Canberra Raiders on a three-game winning streak the prospect of lively conversation seemed probable.
However, several hours later only one topic prevailed, spiralling crime in our beautiful community.
One by one, guests related their own recent experiences with property crime, break and enters, the loss of irreplaceable personal items and stolen or burned cars.
Later I reflected on being a victim of crime over my long life, and I consider I got off pretty lightly for the first, almost, 50 years.
Twenty years in my hometown Moree delivered not one crime against me.
Three years in Sydney saw my car radio stolen, well that’s Sydney.
Twenty-five years in Canberra saw a garden sprinkler disappear, and a few weeks later my home-delivered Saturday edition of the Canberra Times was not to be found.
Brisbane, oh Brisbane, you broke our hearts in our three years there.
We returned from work one afternoon, and our beautiful little home was turned upside down, everything of value, everything we loved was gone, forever.
I wrote to Police Minister Russell Cooper asking why he called Brisbane “Australia’s Most Liveable City” in light of this anti-community behaviour.
Worse was to come, we headed to Toowoomba where we’ve now been for 19 years.
One evening I noticed two youngsters hiding in the garden. I chased them off with a shout – next week they returned with their 21year-old brother and ransacked our house.
Our wonderful police recovered a single laptop bag some months later from the man they’d known since age 10.
Two years later, in a crime spree from Toowoomba to Brisbane, we were cleaned out again.
It takes around 12 months to recover from these invasions and forever to recover emotionally.
Endless photos, papers, receipts, reports and claims result in absolutely no recovery of stolen items and a pittance of the value returned from insurers.
Each day in The Chronicle the unwanted headlines continue – “Teens with axes go on rampage,” “Thieves go on car spree,” “Evasion accused locked up,” “Thieves take three vehicles on one night” and on and on and on.
And the media isn’t extremely helpful either using descriptions like “daring,” “brazen,” “cunning” and “bold.”
I am told it costs we taxpayers $100,000 a year to keep a crook behind bars, small price to pay I reckon to get these pests out of our community and out of our lives.