By Cimara Pearce
VICTORIA Police say they are working on reducing violent crime in Brimbank and deny allegations they are understaffed.
Victoria Police Region 2 Commander Trevor Carter last week told Star he was aware of community concern over violent crime but said police were doing their best to make people feel safer.
Commander Carter said police were conducting a number of operations aimed at “preventing and detecting” violent crime in Brimbank.
“We have doubled the size of the task force that’s investigating these types of crimes,” he said.
“We are aware of the violence issues in Brimbank …we’ve got nearly 200 police in the Brimbank service area and out of that 200 we’ve got about six vacancies that need to be filled and that’s pretty normal.”
Mr Carter said foreign students were the people most commonly attacked in Brimbank.
Police were working with an Indian reference group in a bid to reduce the attacks.
“It’s got to do with the number of international students that are in the Footscray and Sunshine area because of Victoria University,” he said.
“A lot of them have to use public transport to get around. It’s about opportunistic crime rather than race-based crime.”
Mr Carter said it was not difficult to fill vacancies in Brimbank but he admitted there was a high turnover rate. Sunshine residents protested for more police numbers on Friday night, just days after the Victorian ombudsman released a scathing report on Victoria Police’s crime statistics and police numbers.
The report, which was tabled in State Parliament, found that “some police misuse the procedures for recording cleared crime to make it appear that more crime has been successfully solved than is actually the case”.
