By Michael SinclaiR
CAROLINE Springs residents will have an opportunity to voice their concerns at a community safety meeting with senior police and Melton Shire Council next month.
And they will also get the chance to get a look inside the long-awaited police station, which will officially open more than a month late.
The meeting – a joint function of the Police and Community Consultative Committee (PCCC) and the Melton Shire – will be held at the new police station in Caroline Springs Blvd on 11 April.
“It’s a good opportunity for people to air some concerns if they have any about the area,” Caroline Springs Senior Sergeant Warren Greene said.
“We’re already looking at doing a couple of different safety audits in the community to try to identify some problem spots and stamp them out before we get started.”
The new police station is expected to open on 3 April after construction pushed back the initial time frame.
It will initially house 25 police and is expected to extend to a 24-hour station in the next few years.
The station will cover the areas of Caroline Springs, Burnside, Hillside, Taylors Hill, Ravenhall, Rockbank and Diggers Rest, but traffic management and criminal investigation detectives will remain at Melton.
Caroline Springs Residents’ Association (CSRA) president Peter O’Toole said the meeting would be a good chance to address problems in the area including speeding, vandalism and other criminal activity.
“We’re very concerned about the speeding in the area and it is very much common knowledge,” Mr O’Toole said.
“We’ve had one death here already and unless something is not done about trying to control the speed of people who are using Caroline Springs’ main routes, we are going to have more than one death – we’ll probably have kids killed.
“Caroline Springs Blvd and the main thoroughfares are the main areas where we see it (speeding), especially around Christ the Priest Primary School and the new shopping district (Caroline Springs Square).”
Sen Sgt Greene said the speeding motorists would be high among priorities for police, but the area’s youth and family violence also needed attention.
“We rate traffic issues with hoon drivers and speeding motorists as an issue that we’ll be targeting,” he said.
“We also think that the youth in the area are a priority, because while they are not a problem now, we want to ensure that there are now problems in three or four years time when they grow older.”
The community safety meeting will be held at the Caroline Springs police station on Tuesday 11 April from 7pm.
For more information call 9747 7200.
