Residents Hiring Security Guards

How state government's are failing families.

Melbourne residents are pooling their money to hire private security guards to patrol their neighbourhoods amidst an alarming crime surge, according to a report in the Herald-Sun.

People in some estates are spending as much as $3000 a night on guards to provide a deterrent to burglaries and car theft.

Speaking of car theft, it’s up 18 per cent in Victoria this year on last.

It’s an indictment on government when citizens must spend cash, in the middle of a cost of living crisis no less, on security patrols in order to feel safe in their own homes.

Victoria is Australia’s highest taxing state and yet cannot provide basic law and order.

Don’t worry though, the Victorian government can provide millions of dollars for a drug injecting room adjacent to a primary school in Richmond.

Can’t protect you and your family. Can facilitate drug addicts getting their next hit. They don’t call it Australia’s most liveable city for nothing.

What’s weird about Melbourne’s predicament - with residents having to hire security guards - is that there was never any shortage of police during the pandemic. Funny that.

Grandma couldn’t so much as sit on a park bench without being swarmed by police eager to move her on.

A pregnant woman had no sooner posted a meme on Facebook than half a dozen police were barging though her front door to arrest her in her pjs. No more memes from you, young lady!

Dare to turn up for a peaceful demonstration at the Shrine of Remembrance, and coppers were falling over themselves to shoot people in the back with rubber bullets.

But now, with gangs of young people prowling around housing estates breaking into properties and stealing cars, nary an officer in sight.

So the police force that was used to keep citizens in their homes during the pandemic now can’t keep criminals out of homes.

Where did all the police go?

Well, according to the Herald-Sun, around 100 Victorian police were let go because they refused the jab.

Many more retired during the pandemic, sick of being used as lockdown enforcers.

And now, with 800 vacancies to fill, Victoria Police wonder why they can’t find many willing recruits.

Police Federation of Australia President Ian Leavers said earlier this month there was a “perception” about policing after the pandemic that had put people off joining the force.

No kidding.

State governments used police as shock troops to enforce curfews and rings of steel and lockdowns. Now they wonder why people don’t want sign up for that.

But it gets worse when you realise that at the exact time the Victorian Government is having trouble filling police jobs, the Victorian Government is going easy on crime.

Police have admitted that they would turn a blind eye to illicit drug users on the street if they were headed toward a government sponsored injecting room. That’s madness. Going soft on crime only serves to embolden criminals.

And Daniel Andrews is committed to raising the criminal age of responsibility, from 10 to 12 and eventually to 14.

It’s a move sure to put downward pressure on crime stats, even as actual crime goes up.

This sleight of hand allows the government to tell you, if you dare complain about the crime crisis, that it’s all in your head.

Think I’m exaggerating? That’s exactly what police have done in Adelaide where the Acting Police Commissioner recently said there was no crime crisis, only the perception of a crime crisis, this despite the fact that assaults in the first quarter of the year were up by more than 10 per cent.

You weren’t really assaulted in the Adelaide CBD at the weekend, you only perceived yourself to have been assaulted.

They’re doing it Queensland as well.

Complain that 50 per cent of young offenders made to undergo the Queensland Labor Government’s touchy feely Restorative Justice program reoffended within 12 months and you’ll be told, ‘Well, yes, but the number of offenders is going down”.

So crime is up but the good news is the number of criminals is down.

We are supposed to feel safer because criminals are becoming more efficient?

The continually gaslighting of the community - you’re only imagining that there is more crime - is not only a lie, but it is dangerous.

When people no longer believe the government is capable of providing law and order or even capable of admitting the truth about law and order, people are left with little option but to take matters into their own hands.

With residents employing security guards and sleeping with baseball bats under their beds, as some told the Herald Sun they had taken to doing, it’s only a matter of time before a law abiding citizen injures or kills an intruder.

And then the law abiding citizen will be in court - for doing what police ought to have been doing, had the government done its job.

And then I suspect we will find the court system that smacks criminals with wet lettuce leaves is rather harsher on citizens defending their property. After all, a man defending his home and family exposes the failure of police, or more particularly of government policy. And we can’t have that. We mustn’t have that.

So home owners will be cast as dangerous vigilantes, while offenders will continue to be given an arm chair ride at tax payers expense.

And all the while, the government will claim to be very progressive and very caring while insisting the crime wave is entirely in your own head.