Citizens of Rockhampton gathered for a Traditional Acknowledgement of their own, this week. In what may be called a smoking-out ceremony, they paid their respects to local criminals, past, present and emerging. It was quite the Welcome to Rough Justice.
Police are calling for calm as tensions over crime reach boiling point in central Queensland.
On Sunday, a group of people marched on the homes of alleged offenders, on one occasion chasing a person down the street, following an anti-crime rally in Rockhampton.
In Melbourne, they used to say that the quickest way to get a tram to show up was to light up a cigarette. In Rockhampton, they might say that the only way to get a copper to show up is to threaten an alleged criminal.
Police issued move-on directions to 15 people and no-one was injured.
All jokes aside, of course, vigilantism is a deplorable state of affairs. Not just because a mob taking the law into its own hands is inevitably going to go very wrong, but, more importantly, because vigilantism is a sign of a collapsing social order. The Guardian Angels didn’t patrol New York’s subways in the 70s and 80s because police had crime under control. Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t armed because his Democrat-run city was safe and orderly.
According to Queensland Police crime data, 12,533 offences were committed across the Capricornia region in the past six months, up about 5 per cent from 11,959 in the six months prior.
Nearly 13,000 crimes — in a region of around 200,000 people.
It was a similar story across the state, with criminal offences jumping by more than 11 per cent in Queensland in the six months to March, compared to the six months previous.
Those statistics are of no surprise to Yeppoon business owner Anne Fursman, whose sports store has been broken into five times in the past 10 months.
Ms Fursman has installed stone bollards in front of the property to prevent ram raids, and said her annual insurance premium doubled in September, increasing from $8,000 to $16,000.
“We don’t feel like we’re being heard, we don’t feel like there’s real any action,” she said.
And they wonder why people feel the need to deal with a problem that police and authorities clearly are not.
That’s not how the “human rights” brigade sees it, of course.
But for local business owner and human rights advocate Zhanae Dodd, the public taking crime “into their own hands” is a scary and harmful response to a complex social issue.
The Ghungalu, Birri, Widi/Wiri and Kaanju woman said she had noticed tension building in the community for months […]
Working with disengaged youth, Ms Dodd said “nothing good” would come from vigilante action.
Perhaps if she spent less time assiduously totting up tribal loyalties and making up excuses for criminality. Heaven forbid these box-tickers identify first and foremost as Australian.
To paraphrase Dire Straits, human rights activists are useless, academics are worse.
Ross Homel, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Griffith University, agreed vigilante behaviour was dangerous […]
“We give police responsibility, and we live under the rule of law, not under the rule of the mob … mobs can get it wrong.”
Of course they can — indeed, will. But there wouldn’t be mobs if we actually lived under the rule of law, rather than the rule of the perpetually offended.
“[These groups could] join forces with people who are working to try and ensure that these kids, particularly at a young age, get the help they need,” he said.
ABC Australia
Why? Where are their parents?
Too busy blaming everything on “colonisation”, one suspects.