Steven Mace
04-04-2002, 09:12 PM
Sydney: gun capital of Australia
By Martin Chulov and Monica Videnieks
April 04, 2002
THE number of armed robberies in Sydney's most populated areas has soared by 34 per cent over two years, forcing police to reform a hold-up response team and concede guns have become endemic on the city's streets.
Fraud and assault levels also rose sharply with most other crime categories remaining stable – but near-record highs, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research annual report has found.
A fall in the recorded rates of home break-ins and indecent assaults were the only bright points in an otherwise bleak portrait of the NSW law enforcement environment, which comes 12 months before the state election.
The state Government and NSW police were quick to label the jump in armed robberies and assaults a serious concern. Bureau director Don Weatherburn fuelled their fears with his assessment that NSW had a "major problem with the gun issue".
"There is no doubt there are more guns in circulation now," Dr Weatherburn said, in a statement that casts doubt on the effectiveness of gun laws repeatedly described by the Government as the toughest in the nation.
Police said they had taken 5000 guns off the streets during a four-month amnesty last year.
An Australian Institute of Criminology report into homicide released last week found that murders committed with firearms had increased slightly across the nation over the past year. The increase comes despite a tightening of national gun laws since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
The dramatic increase in armed robberies was focused on four areas – Blacktown, Canterbury-Bankstown, St George-Sutherland and central western Sydney.
Dr Weatherburn suggested the jump could be partially due to a prolonged heroin drought, which had bumped up the street price of half a gram of heroin from $138 to $186.
Deputy Police Commissioner Dave Madden said a spin-off from the drought had been a rise in armed robberies offsetting drug-related break-and-enter crime.
The Government stopped short of forming a new armed robbery squad, preferring to anoint a new group of specialists as a response team.
However Opposition police spokesman Andrew Tink said the state's "disgraceful" figures highlighted a need for the type of dedicated squad disbanded in NSW after the Wood royal commission exposed corrupt detectives were staging robberies instead of solving them.
"The reality is that every other state has got an armed hold-up squad and every other state has got an armed hold-up rate that is just a fraction of ours," Mr Tink said yesterday.
Meanwhile, new Opposition Leader John Brogden yesterday seized on fears of a community crime wave to announce his first policy, committing a Coalition government to following the lead of other states, by introducing police in schools to curb gang violence.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4069951%255E2702,00.html
Steve Mace
By Martin Chulov and Monica Videnieks
April 04, 2002
THE number of armed robberies in Sydney's most populated areas has soared by 34 per cent over two years, forcing police to reform a hold-up response team and concede guns have become endemic on the city's streets.
Fraud and assault levels also rose sharply with most other crime categories remaining stable – but near-record highs, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research annual report has found.
A fall in the recorded rates of home break-ins and indecent assaults were the only bright points in an otherwise bleak portrait of the NSW law enforcement environment, which comes 12 months before the state election.
The state Government and NSW police were quick to label the jump in armed robberies and assaults a serious concern. Bureau director Don Weatherburn fuelled their fears with his assessment that NSW had a "major problem with the gun issue".
"There is no doubt there are more guns in circulation now," Dr Weatherburn said, in a statement that casts doubt on the effectiveness of gun laws repeatedly described by the Government as the toughest in the nation.
Police said they had taken 5000 guns off the streets during a four-month amnesty last year.
An Australian Institute of Criminology report into homicide released last week found that murders committed with firearms had increased slightly across the nation over the past year. The increase comes despite a tightening of national gun laws since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
The dramatic increase in armed robberies was focused on four areas – Blacktown, Canterbury-Bankstown, St George-Sutherland and central western Sydney.
Dr Weatherburn suggested the jump could be partially due to a prolonged heroin drought, which had bumped up the street price of half a gram of heroin from $138 to $186.
Deputy Police Commissioner Dave Madden said a spin-off from the drought had been a rise in armed robberies offsetting drug-related break-and-enter crime.
The Government stopped short of forming a new armed robbery squad, preferring to anoint a new group of specialists as a response team.
However Opposition police spokesman Andrew Tink said the state's "disgraceful" figures highlighted a need for the type of dedicated squad disbanded in NSW after the Wood royal commission exposed corrupt detectives were staging robberies instead of solving them.
"The reality is that every other state has got an armed hold-up squad and every other state has got an armed hold-up rate that is just a fraction of ours," Mr Tink said yesterday.
Meanwhile, new Opposition Leader John Brogden yesterday seized on fears of a community crime wave to announce his first policy, committing a Coalition government to following the lead of other states, by introducing police in schools to curb gang violence.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4069951%255E2702,00.html
Steve Mace