THE TWEED Volume 2 #22 Thursday, February 11, 2010
Valentines Day
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Crime rates ‘at tolerable level’ Luis Feliu
Senior state and Tweed police have rejected criticism that youth violence in the Tweed is out of control or that stations are understaffed, following a statewide television program suggesting a growing problem in the shire. Tweed MP Geoff Provest told ABC’s Stateline last Friday that the ratio of police to residents was below the state average (one to 750 compared to one to 550 around the state), a claim rejected by the state’s deputy police commissioner David Owens. Mr Provest, a vocal advocate for more police, said some elderly residents were afraid to leave their homes and a local man had committed suicide after being constantly harassed.
Up to residents to report But Assistant Commissioner Owens told the program it was up to residents to help police intelligence gathering by reporting all crime in the face of claims youth gangs were running wild in the area. He said there was a big gap between perception and reality. ‘Now we have a number of people going around saying these youth gangs are running berserk, they’re causing crime, what I need to do is get the factual information because that’s not what our data says,’ he said. He was backed up this week by the police union and the relieving Tweed police chief, Superintendent Jeff Loy, who told The Echo there were ‘no youth gangs in the Tweed’, suggesting the issue was more about less tolerance for youth by an increasing older population. His comments follow a letter to The Echo by a Kingscliff resident last week saying that on the night of Friday,
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February 5, ‘a gang of around 150 kids were roaming the streets... being loud, acting in a disorderly manner and creating havoc in the community... most were under 18 years of age’. However, the resident wished to remain anonymous and did not say whether she reported any incidents to police. She highlighed the lack of frontline police, especially at her local police station, as a problem now and into the future of the fast-growing shire. Police Association representative Tony King told ABC Radio he felt the Tweed was under-resourced for a town its size. ‘With the resources that are at the Tweed... for a town that size to have one police truck 24/7 and a second truck on the Friday and Saturday nights, indicates that there’s a lack of resources there,’ he said. Mr King said there was always a proportion of crime that went unreported in any community, ‘so I’d be calling on those people of the Tweed to ring up and report all crime, give him [the deputy commissioner] the figures, show him what the reality is’. Superintendent Loy said the Tweed had many young people and a higher percentage of older people and retirees, ‘so there tends to be less tolerance for young people in relation to their generation.’ He said it was ‘sad’ but some people were living in ‘a cloak of perception of fear yet crime rates are at very tolerable and acceptable levels’. ‘We have 168 authorised police for the command and 183 on the books, but the bottom line is they’re spread over a big command from Tweed Heads to Byron Bay and it was not a matter of more police but ‘appropriate deployment’. He said kids were ‘getting a bad rap’
From little things big things grow
Murwillumbah Street resident Lisa Blackwell hopes the sustainable street program will spread throughout the shire. Photo Jeff ‘Sesame Seed Street’ Dawson Luis Feliu
Murwillumbah Street residents consider themselves lucky to live in one of the shire’s first ‘sustainable streets’ where homegrown food is freely shared among neighbours and skills and knowledge for a cleaner, greener environment are passed on in a friendly, neighbourly way. Now they say it’s time for other streets to follow the lead and join the Sustainable Streets Program, an initiative of Tweed and Byron Councils which aims to bring neighbours together for local environmental improvements. Judging by the response of residents of Murwilliumbah Street, the initiative will very quickly catch on throughout the shire. The street has continued on page 2 been participating in the program
since last year and residents have reported great improvements in friendliness, cooperation and environmental outcomes such as swapping produce once a month, installing solar panels, solar hot water as well as many street fruit trees. Resident Lisa Blackwell, one of the project instigators for her street, said it had ‘turned into such a beautiful thing and we’re all very lucky’. Ms Blackwell and neighbour Diana Eriksen sought help from council’s sustainability officer Dan Walton late last year to set up a Sustainable Street program. ‘We all now know each other pretty well, even though we don’t want to live in each other’s pockets, it’s brought all the street together, young ones as well, we’ve planted sustainable fruit trees up such as citrus and avocados and down
the street and we get bounty from all our gardens such as eggplants, zucchini, eggs, lettuce, chutneys, flowers, lemons,’ she said. ‘On the first Saturday of the month we meet under the jacaranda tree to swap our goodies and ideas, it’s like a village, we just hope this branches out to more streets to make it a sustainable town in sustainable shire’. The meetings discuss joint and individual projects to reduce water and energy consumption, swap food and unwanted goods, and talk about practical environmental improvements, such as car pooling. ‘We want our kids to walk to school and pick some fresh fruit, we even have bee hives in the street for honey production. Resident Julia Hancock said ‘the continued on page 4
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