Reining in wayward offenders

Editorial: Jesse Wray-McCann

When Operation Wayward started cracking down on youth street gangs in two police divisions in the western suburbs, it was so successful it was expanded across the entire North West Metro Region.

Not only has the operation resulted in hundreds of arrests in just a few short years, but it has even set a precedent for how courts deal with young offenders.

Operation Wayward was established in March 2017 and involved police units in the Brimbank and Hobsons Bay areas targeting teenagers committing crimes such as home invasions, car jackings and street robberies.

In its first 21 months across these two divisions, Operation Wayward investigated 78 home invasions, five carjackings, 74 armed robberies and 84 robberies, and made 285 arrests.

The decision was then made in March 2019 to centralise the operation under the Regional Crime Squad (RCS) so this model of managing street gang crime could operate across all five divisions in North West Metro.

Inspector Darren Bentley and Senior Sergeant Marnie Sheehy oversaw the RCS and assigned three of its five crews to crack down on street gangs through Operation Wayward.

Insp Bentley said many of the street gangs were targeting vulnerable victims, such as students who were robbed while walking home alone from the train station.

“They would also terrorise families by breaking into their homes to steal higher-end cars and would then go on to commit further crimes with the stolen vehicles,” Insp Bentley said.

“There was a certain element of fear across the community and we were all conscious of that fact and wanted to help put an end to it.”

The three tenacious RCS crews, consisting of five officers each, started at and maintained a break-neck speed in tracking down, arresting and charging the youth offenders.

Every day, when any of the five divisions would respond to such crimes, they would hand them over to the RCS to investigate.

“There was never a moment where our investigators were sitting there with nothing to do,” Sen Sgt Sheehy said.

"Our officers were at court almost every day and we were executing multiple search warrants on a weekly basis at the very minimum."

The handpicked crews were made up of detectives and officers who were already equipped with the all-important local knowledge of young offenders across the five divisions.

“When Operation Wayward was originally set up, it was difficult for the local investigative units to track the identity of offenders if they fled back into a division where the operation wasn’t running and where the officers didn’t know who was who in youth offending,” Insp Bentley said.

“But once it was centralised, the local knowledge of our officers who had worked in those divisions started to sift them out extremely quickly.”

The RCS’s two tactical intelligence officers established an effective intel model for the operation, which made particular use of monitoring social media, through which a lot of the street gangs networked.

During its seven months under the RCS, Operation Wayward investigated 167 incidents, resulting in 139 arrests and 124 search warrants being executed.

“Those kinds of results they achieved were remarkable,” Insp Bentley said.

“We look back and think, ‘How did they manage that?’ But they did and it was phenomenal.”

Operation Wayward’s impact wasn’t limited to the western and northern suburbs, the RCS held daily meetings with their Southern Metro Region counterparts when offenders would cross over the regional border.

In investigating an affray between two different youth gangs at a Footscray café on 31 July 2019, the North West Metro RCS teamed with the southern RCS to carry out 16 simultaneous dawn raids across Melbourne’s outer southeast, resulting in 17 arrests.

After September 2019, Operation Wayward was returned to the individual divisions, but now all five divisions in North West Metro, rather than just two, have a crew dedicated to street gangs.

Despite the sheer number of arrests made, one of the most telling impacts of Operation Wayward came through a single street assault and robbery case last year.

Fresh from assaulting a food delivery driver in Braybrook and failing in an attempt to steal his mobile phone on the night of 13 March, a group of up to nine youths went in search of a new victim.

Moments later, they came across 45-yearold Wei Deng going for a walk with his headphones on.

Mr Deng was visiting from China after saving money for years to spend two weeks with his son, who was living in Melbourne.

Without saying anything, the gang approached him and one of the youths landed a flying kick to Mr Deng’s chin.

Mr Deng’s head smashed on the road and he started convulsing and bleeding badly from his nose.

As he lay there unconscious, the gang rummaged through his pockets and stole his belongings.

They dragged him off the road and fled the scene, leaving him to die.

Mr Deng was taken to hospital in a critical state and required brain surgery to save his life.

He survived but will now live the rest of his life in a vegetative state.

Sen Sgt Sheehy said they arrested and charged the main offender, aged 15, just two days later and then eventually arrested eight of his co-accused.

“He was viciously attacked by this mob of thug high school students, all for a mobile phone,” Sen Sgt Sheehy said.

Usually such offences by a minor would be handled by the Children’s Court.

But such was the seriousness of the attack, the RCS and prosecutors were successful in seeking the case be upgraded to the County Court, where serious crimes by adults are dealt with.

“To have such a case uplifted to the County Court in these circumstances was absolutely ground-breaking and sets a precedent for the courts,” Insp Bentley said.

The main offender, who originally spent time on remand, was convicted and ordered to undertake a nine-month Youth Attendance Order.

Insp Bentley and Sen Sgt Sheehy now look back at the RCS’s seven-month stint with Operation Wayward with pride.

“Their job was not to simply disrupt these street gangs but dismantle them,” Insp Bentley said.

“Ensuring the safety of the wider community is paramount and I feel they made significant inroads in providing community safety and reassurance.

“With the amount of arrests made, they were extremely successful in dismantling multiple street gangs and now the divisions are continuing the great work of Operation Wayward.”