Speaker 1: Apparently if you own a nice house and a nice
Speaker 1: car is in the driveway, you're a target at the moment.
Speaker 2: There's nothing funny about unarmed youth with a machete that
Speaker 2: could literally cut someone's head off coming into a house
Speaker 2: to pinch a car on a piggy bank and a
Speaker 2: few things.
Speaker 1: And they said, I don't want to blame COVID. I
Speaker 1: really don't, But my son or daughter was locked up
Speaker 1: inside for so long and had so many rules and
Speaker 1: regulations around them, and once they got out, that was great,
Speaker 1: but then they just went nuts.
Speaker 2: My'm Andrew rules his life and crimes. This month, we
Speaker 2: are seeing the rise and rise and rise of trouble
Speaker 2: in our streets and in our homes. The Herald Son
Speaker 2: is calling it our suburbs under siege. And you can
Speaker 2: see why our editors here have gone for that headline
Speaker 2: and that theme, because it's the story of our times.
Speaker 2: Reagan Hodge, you are a crime report for the Herald Son,
Speaker 2: a part in covering this story for a lot of months. Now,
Speaker 2: you and some of your colleagues you've currently dropped in
Speaker 2: to talk about it. Why are we seeing a spike
Speaker 2: in this new year of twenty twenty five. Is there
Speaker 2: a spike.
Speaker 1: I think it's just being highlighted more aline and victims
Speaker 1: are becoming increasingly fed up with this. You know, they've
Speaker 1: sort of put up with it for the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, but I think in the past few months
Speaker 1: and over summer and it's autumn this year, they've sort
Speaker 1: of put the foot down and said they've really had
Speaker 1: enough and they want they really want to change.
Speaker 2: It strikes me, just as not a casual observer, but
Speaker 2: as someone who's been watching this develop that we're now
Speaker 2: seeing some precise and fairly graphic examples of people who've
Speaker 2: had their homes invaded by armed youths and have been
Speaker 2: willing to talk about it and come to us and
Speaker 2: bear their stories or publish their stories. For instance, the
Speaker 2: lady we had in our paper in the last few
Speaker 2: days told about how she can't sleep and how it's
Speaker 2: really sort of ruined her life, which you can imagine happening,
Speaker 2: and more than one. She's not the only one.
Speaker 1: But not at all. I've spoken to a few people
Speaker 1: in the last few days. We're talking in early March,
Speaker 1: and there's a young fella. He's only seven, he's in
Speaker 1: grade two. This year, his family enjoyed a home invasion
Speaker 1: at their Armadale home, and people will say, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a ritzy suburb, But there's still a seven year old
Speaker 1: kids sleeping in there. And that was in December and
Speaker 1: it's early March. He still hasn't slept a whole night
Speaker 1: in his own bed. He's just too scared that the
Speaker 1: offenders may return.
Speaker 2: Of course, what sort of people would say oh, it's
Speaker 2: a richy suburb as some sort of oblique defense.
Speaker 1: Who would say that people online are quite happy to
Speaker 1: have a go, And even the teenage criminals whose who
Speaker 1: drive around the suburbs. I just got off the phone
Speaker 1: to a parent of one of these teenage offenders just
Speaker 1: before I jumped in here, and a son told his
Speaker 1: mother that I don't worry about the rich people. They've
Speaker 1: got enough money to replace a car. That's why we go.
Speaker 1: That's why we go and steal them, which is just
Speaker 1: grateling to hear it.
Speaker 2: That's just wonderful, isn't it. I mind, you, people that
Speaker 2: do the wrong thing at every level justify it, from
Speaker 2: dictators down to shop thieves and pedophiles. They always justify
Speaker 2: it and say that they're not as.
Speaker 1: Bad as the other guy.
Speaker 2: That's worse at eas human nature to do that, to
Speaker 2: push the blame sideways. But he's sort of shocking to hear,
Speaker 2: and it would make a lot of people very angry
Speaker 2: to hear that.
Speaker 1: And I know one of our colleagues here at the
Speaker 1: Herald Son he questioned, why you would own a nice
Speaker 1: car now knowing that there's almost a good chance it's
Speaker 1: going to be pinched, then you might be better off
Speaker 1: owning a sort of a more vint style, less luxury vehicle,
Speaker 1: which isn't as appealing to some crooks.
Speaker 2: It won't stop them stealing cars even if everybody switched
Speaker 2: to eight year old Volvers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what they'll steal. Tell you, what would be
Speaker 1: a good deterrent is to drive a manual.
Speaker 2: That is the smartest thing I have heard for a
Speaker 2: long time, because none of them, nobody manual is. In fact,
Speaker 2: I have a three year old grandson who when he
Speaker 2: gets in the car with my wife, in a particular
Speaker 2: car with my wife and she uses the gear stick,
Speaker 2: he is blown away that she can do this because
Speaker 2: he's never seen either of his parents driving a manual,
Speaker 2: and he notices that it's just part of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be a pretty handy deterrent. And I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if people opted by a manual car
Speaker 1: at the sales. I mean, people are putting the old
Speaker 1: steering wheel locks on their cars again, putting tracking devices
Speaker 1: under their bumpers to see where their car is at
Speaker 1: all times of the day in case it gets nicked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: buying a man car might be the way to go.
Speaker 2: Oh, look into that. I quite like manuals. Have you
Speaker 2: written that story?
Speaker 1: No, So it's out there for anyone that wants to
Speaker 1: jump by.
Speaker 2: I think by the time we go towere, you might
Speaker 2: have a lot of these, you said, skinny guys that
Speaker 2: can get through things like dog access doors, you know,
Speaker 2: dog flaps, or through bathroom windows, those sort of tight
Speaker 2: fitting spots that most of us wouldn't get to. But
Speaker 2: they're young, they're stronger athletic, and they're pretty skinny. Is
Speaker 2: that a fair observation?
Speaker 1: They are on the slimmer side.
Speaker 2: Is that why the police call them skinnies?
Speaker 1: That's possibly the reason. But we got sent some video
Speaker 1: recently of this very lanky gentleman jumping through a doggy door,
Speaker 1: and he managed to reach through the doggy door. Half
Speaker 1: his body was through it and he managed to unlock
Speaker 1: the laundry door with his hand. Yes, and away they
Speaker 1: went in. They go walk around the land room, in
Speaker 1: the kitchen. Oh, there's the handbag, there's the keys, there's
Speaker 1: a new car, there's some wheels for us. And where
Speaker 1: we go out the laundry door. They went back over
Speaker 1: the fence.
Speaker 2: So, as well as manual cars, perhaps you either need
Speaker 2: very small dogs or if you've got a large dog,
Speaker 2: an extremely savage one.
Speaker 1: An extremely loud one will do the trick.
Speaker 2: A loud one does the trick. Is this the assessment
Speaker 2: of seasoned police that say loud dogs will repel skinnies Police.
Speaker 1: And victims mainly are the ones that say, yeah, the
Speaker 1: dogs started barking and that sort of set the offenders
Speaker 1: off and they'd rather no confrontation, so off they go.
Speaker 1: You see countless videos from front porches and driveways of
Speaker 1: people creeping up to a front door and they're tiptying
Speaker 1: ready to try and unlock the front door, and then
Speaker 1: the dog starts barking, and off they go. They sprint.
Speaker 1: They've had enough not entering this home because a little
Speaker 1: yap yap dog is having to go and it's saved
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 2: That's so good, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good footage.
Speaker 2: I think probably there's an opening for the right sort
Speaker 2: of dogs to do this, you know, good noisy, tough
Speaker 2: dogs that will have a bit of a.
Speaker 1: Go to those little yap yap ones, that little white
Speaker 1: fluffy ones. Anything it makes a noise, or do the
Speaker 1: job at the moment.
Speaker 2: Good stuff. Among the examples we've read recently, there was
Speaker 2: a woman in Brighton who there was a pretty big
Speaker 2: story about her, and there was the other one in winter.
Speaker 2: Can you recall those stories and what was the essence
Speaker 2: of them?
Speaker 1: So at Windsor at the home belongs to Flora Socrats
Speaker 1: and she was walking down her hallway in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day. It was daylight. You could see in
Speaker 1: the video that she's eventually posted and sent to us
Speaker 1: the sun shining. It's two three in the afternoon and
Speaker 1: she has decided to get her phone out after she
Speaker 1: spotted an alleged defender walking down the hallway and into
Speaker 1: her kitchen while she was home. Now this a young
Speaker 1: chap had her backpack on and a hood over his face,
Speaker 1: and she begins from meals on wheels. I don't think
Speaker 1: he was waking I'm making a house visit. I don't
Speaker 1: think he was fixing the sink or making a delivery
Speaker 1: in the post. I think he was having a snoop
Speaker 1: around of maybe what Flora socratis owned. And she decided
Speaker 1: to which was just crazy, and it's really good footage
Speaker 1: for us and the public to see. She's whipped out
Speaker 1: her phone and just chased this bloke down the hallway
Speaker 1: and she's screaming, what are you doing in my house?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? What's in your bag? What have
Speaker 1: you taken? It was really quite dramatic. And she's chased
Speaker 1: him out the front door and he jumps over the fence.
Speaker 1: One leg goes over, the second one goes over, and
Speaker 1: she's just filming this all on her phone, which twenty
Speaker 1: thirty years ago would be unheard of, of course, but
Speaker 1: that's I think the current age we live in.
Speaker 2: That's a very good story. And was he an athletic
Speaker 2: young fellow there could jump over the fences.
Speaker 1: He managed to get over quite quickly, so.
Speaker 2: He wasn't just a little fat garden though he was
Speaker 2: a tall, skinny boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't on the thick site.
Speaker 2: Good and he probably doesn't understand history, because if he
Speaker 2: knew what Greeks did the German paratroopers in World War Two,
Speaker 2: it's particularly increte he might not do that because the
Speaker 2: Greeks have a habit of picking up the nearest cutlery
Speaker 2: and attacking. I once knew Greek shepherd killed seven Germans
Speaker 2: really with a knife. Really, he was quite quite willing. Now,
Speaker 2: the other case we're looking at, I think or you
Speaker 2: looked at, was at black Rock, which of course is
Speaker 2: one of our most excellent bayside suburbs in Melbourne. But
Speaker 2: you know, it's just a good, solid place. It's not
Speaker 2: too rack. It's the sort of place where a lot
Speaker 2: of people live and enjoy themselves and work hard and
Speaker 2: all that, and their reward for that is to be
Speaker 2: broken into.
Speaker 1: Apparently, if you own a nice house and a nice
Speaker 1: car is in the driveway, you're a target at the moment.
Speaker 1: So we went out there in early March with her
Speaker 1: that some footage was circling around of these alleged defenders
Speaker 1: walking up a driveway so calmly. This bloke has a
Speaker 1: big machete in his right hand, and the homeowners estimated
Speaker 1: it to be about eighty centimeters in length. It was enormous.
Speaker 1: And he's got a hood on, he's got the slides on,
Speaker 1: he's got a little backpack on. I think, just walks
Speaker 1: up the driveway and then two blokes follow suit and
Speaker 1: then they go. This was at five o'clock in the
Speaker 1: morning on a Tuesday in early March. Not even two
Speaker 1: in the morning, not one, not midnight. This is five
Speaker 1: in the morning. People are waking up at this time, Jim.
Speaker 2: Are these guys on bucks out the front deliveries being made?
Speaker 1: And then they go through the side door while these
Speaker 1: two primary school aged kids sleep. I think they have
Speaker 1: a nine year old and a twelve year old. So
Speaker 1: they're inside sleeping, and they drummage around the alleged defenders.
Speaker 1: They find car keys to two vehicles, shows them they
Speaker 1: back out one and the one parked on the street
Speaker 1: off that goes and they were in and out within
Speaker 1: five minutes and two cars gone, a luxury handbag gone,
Speaker 1: a wallet gone, and the nine year old girl's piggybank
Speaker 1: was ransacked for ninety five dollars.
Speaker 2: A piggy bank was ransacked. It's ugly stuff, really, and
Speaker 2: you know, we can make bad jokes about it, but
Speaker 2: there's nothing funny about unarmed youth who's probably six foot
Speaker 2: high and the old with a machete that could cut
Speaker 2: literally cut someone's head off, or a limbo cut an
Speaker 2: arm off, coming into a house to pinch a car
Speaker 2: on a piggy bank and a.
Speaker 1: Few things ninety five dollars worth in notes and coins.
Speaker 2: I know we've discussed this before another time, but motivation.
Speaker 2: You've got people who are taking cars. There's a thrill
Speaker 2: component of this. They want to drive cars fast and
Speaker 2: record it. But also for a lot of them point
Speaker 2: that they can sell it on to other crooks who
Speaker 2: do other things with them, and the handbags and so forth.
Speaker 2: It's a way to keep themselves in petty cash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they can sell them on things like Facebook Marketplace.
Speaker 1: Some would sell them to drug dealers in replace for
Speaker 1: some gear. Some offenders would use those vehicles to commit
Speaker 1: cigarette burglaries, which have really kicked off in Melbourne, specifically
Speaker 1: the Southeast over the past six months.
Speaker 2: Describe one of those your favorite cigarette burglary.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's plenty of them, but they'll rock up to
Speaker 1: a seven to eleven or a BP early hours of
Speaker 1: the morning or eleven o'clock at night. Sometimes they're eight
Speaker 1: o'clock at night, not even late, and they'll go out
Speaker 1: in the eastern suburbs. They get hit really hard and
Speaker 1: four of them will run in. One will jump the
Speaker 1: counter and demand access to the smokes cupboard behind the jump,
Speaker 1: and the poor attendant just had to put their hands
Speaker 1: up and say, all right, go for your life. And
Speaker 1: you see the footage of these teenagers. Off they go
Speaker 1: with a big tray of smokes, dump it in the
Speaker 1: boot out that's parked out the front near the bowsers,
Speaker 1: and off they go. And they take those smokes and
Speaker 1: I believe they can either sell those to some illicit stores.
Speaker 1: Of course, this's a story for another day.
Speaker 2: They've always been good currency cigarettes. You can always get
Speaker 2: rid of them, sell them in pubs, sell them in
Speaker 2: the illicit stores. They're great stuff and you get it
Speaker 2: like a million bucks worth on a truck. They're extremely
Speaker 2: valuable for their weight.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, obviously cars are a big driver for these good word,
Speaker 2: big driver for these guys. They want the thrill of
Speaker 2: getting the luxury car, the fast car, the better car
Speaker 2: than the mate, stole, all that sort of stuff. The
Speaker 2: basic sort of thing to do. But is there a
Speaker 2: destination for some of these cars. What happens to most
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are dumped on the side of
Speaker 1: the road. So they'll take a vehicle from maybe a
Speaker 1: nice affluent suburban and it's a nice European high speed
Speaker 1: luxury car and they think, oh, how good is this?
Speaker 1: This will go like the Clappers, they'll take it down
Speaker 1: to the Monash, the EastLink Peninsula links some of the favorites.
Speaker 1: Just having a quick look at their social media activity,
Speaker 1: you see that they like filming themselves on the Monash
Speaker 1: fast speeds and the speedos rising one hundred and ninety one,
Speaker 1: ninety five two two ten. It's just you don't know
Speaker 1: cars can go that fast, but they do. And they're
Speaker 1: filming with one hand on the steering wheel at one
Speaker 1: hand with the phone, and it's just mind boggling how
Speaker 1: they don't flip and roll this car and crash and
Speaker 1: kill more innocent people. But that's the thrill that they
Speaker 1: get out of it is going at these high speeds
Speaker 1: and it's late at night, there aren't many cars on
Speaker 1: the road, but they're flying two hundred and ten, two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty kilometers.
Speaker 2: An hour more. A thing goes wrong. Yep, you're dead.
Speaker 1: Small pothole and there's a few them around, yes, Or
Speaker 1: if you get a little bump in the road at
Speaker 1: that speed your toast you are.
Speaker 2: Is there any sense that some of those cars are
Speaker 2: going to vanish off the map and not be found
Speaker 2: by the side of the road because they've gone on elsewhere,
Speaker 2: They've gone into state, or they've been pulled apart for parts.
Speaker 2: Are they going to chop shops?
Speaker 1: So Victoria Police and we're not doing a puff piece
Speaker 1: on them, but they do a really good job to
Speaker 1: recover more than ninety four percent of vehicles stolen do
Speaker 1: They under the Operation Trinity Banner and they're out there
Speaker 1: every night doing some hard work. But more than ninety
Speaker 1: four percent of cars are found within a few days
Speaker 1: or weeks. Sure, they've been thrashed and beaten up and
Speaker 1: flogged to the till there's no tomorrow, but they find
Speaker 1: them parked in on the side of the road, you know,
Speaker 1: in a residential street or a court until someone finally
Speaker 1: reports it as suspicious vehicle parked out at the front
Speaker 1: of my joint.
Speaker 2: Okay, The story that strikes me is where do we
Speaker 2: stand those who own the cars and where do they
Speaker 2: stand with insurance because Okay, your car's been flogged, as
Speaker 2: in flogged to death, you know, driven hard. They might
Speaker 2: have jammed it in the second year and done you know,
Speaker 2: eight thousand reefs or something. Yeah, when you know in
Speaker 2: cars are never driven beyond about two and a half
Speaker 2: thousand reefs, A lot of strain can be put on
Speaker 2: a vehicle. What do insurers say about it? Are they
Speaker 2: paying out? And is it causing premiums to go higher?
Speaker 2: It must be an effect.
Speaker 1: I don't believe they're are too generous in paying out.
Speaker 2: They're not.
Speaker 1: They're victims. So I know a few victims that have said,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to sell the car now, cut my
Speaker 1: losses and sell it for almost half the price of
Speaker 1: what I bought it for because I know it's been
Speaker 1: flogged for twelve hours and they've done four hunderd kys
Speaker 1: in it just flying, And he says, it's not the
Speaker 1: same car anymore. I'm going to sell it. And something else.
Speaker 2: Is there a sense it's now that it's no longer theirs.
Speaker 1: That it has been dirty?
Speaker 2: Dirty? Yeah, they say that about burglaries. People feel that
Speaker 2: their house has been breached by others and they don't
Speaker 2: want to stay there, you know.
Speaker 1: And these people don't care about the interior of a car.
Speaker 1: They spill drinks in there, they do drugs in there.
Speaker 1: Often there's drug residue on the inside that the police
Speaker 1: have to sort of swarm and then clean as well.
Speaker 1: You can't give it back with ice on the They
Speaker 1: leave rubbish all over the place, or they throw your
Speaker 1: personal belongings out the window. It doesn't feel like your
Speaker 1: car anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, interesting psychological thing there. Even if you could
Speaker 2: clean it and drive it, you'd rather not, it's not
Speaker 2: the same. Rather sell it down the line to somebody
Speaker 2: else'll create a marketing bargain luxury cars at the other end.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they say they used to be sneaking them out,
Speaker 2: luxury cars into containers and exporting them to sort of
Speaker 2: black market states where they can sell them in the
Speaker 2: Middle East and maybe parts of Europe.
Speaker 1: I saw a Facebook marketplace at the other night, and
Speaker 1: this bloke was trying to flog it, I think an
Speaker 1: old commodore, well not even an old one that was
Speaker 1: maybe ten years old, and he said three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: cash if gone tonight. That was their post. And it
Speaker 1: was very, very suspicious. I mean, some people need money fast,
Speaker 1: but maybe not that fast.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's interesting. Well, I know when you look up
Speaker 2: VIC roads on the regio, there's now a service for
Speaker 2: any registration plate you put in. It'll tell you all
Speaker 2: about that car. You can find if you pay a
Speaker 2: small fee, whether it's been stolen or not, all its history.
Speaker 2: There's such a demand from the public for this that
Speaker 2: VIC Grugs are now supplying this service.
Speaker 1: People are onto it too. They're also onto the court lists,
Speaker 1: and we see this popping up online of repair defenders.
Speaker 1: Some vigilantes in the community will look up the Victorian
Speaker 1: court lists and see when their favorite criminal is due
Speaker 1: to a peer at a local manage. It's called so
Speaker 1: they've really called on to where the movements of these
Speaker 1: criminals A.
Speaker 2: Good a bit of citizen sort of activity.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: Nothing wrong with that. The crooks are quite happy to
Speaker 2: use the internet to further their own ends, so absolutely
Speaker 2: it can be used against them, it has been said,
Speaker 2: and it appeals to me and to most people. I
Speaker 2: think if you are found with a weapon on somebody
Speaker 2: else's premises, you don't get bail. A weapon equals jail.
Speaker 2: You're locked up you're not out on the streets again
Speaker 2: tomorrow to do it all again. That would seem to
Speaker 2: me to be eminently fair and sensible because the danger.
Speaker 2: You know, they're saying, we're putting them out on bail
Speaker 2: because it's bad for them to be locked up with
Speaker 2: other bad guys. True, there's no doubt that's true. But
Speaker 2: there comes a point when the danger to other people
Speaker 2: out weighs that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. The community at some point has to be protected
Speaker 1: prioritized as well. No one wants to put kids in jails.
Speaker 1: That's never a great outcome, is it that.
Speaker 2: Unless they're carrying machetes and knives and possibly guns, then
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 1: And it's not a life sentence, it's not decades in present.
Speaker 1: There has to be some consequences for your actions at
Speaker 1: some point now some people, and it's a really good
Speaker 1: argument to have with or a debate to have with people. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're going to mix with other criminals inside it, whether
Speaker 1: it's Parkville if they're young, or a bar and if
Speaker 1: they're older, but there has to become a point where
Speaker 1: the community safety needs to be prioritized.
Speaker 2: It seems to me to be an element of false
Speaker 2: logic in all that handringing sort of bleeding heart stuff,
Speaker 2: because here we have youths who buy and large aren't
Speaker 2: buy and large aren't solo offenders. They're going around with
Speaker 2: other ears. They're already in gangs. They're already rubbing shoulders
Speaker 2: with other crooks, and they've already learned the bad habits.
Speaker 2: So is it that bad if you know, three guys
Speaker 2: in this gang go and get banged up for six
Speaker 2: months or four months or three months. They're already living
Speaker 2: in some sharehouse somewhere.
Speaker 1: A lot of the kids who are committing these sorts
Speaker 1: of crimes are living in residential care, so under the
Speaker 1: state's care, they live together. They come and go as
Speaker 1: they please. You obviously can't lock them up inside residential care,
Speaker 1: so they can leave the residents and they reported missing,
Speaker 1: but they'll go for days on end, they'll meet up
Speaker 1: with whoever they really want, and who knows what they
Speaker 1: get up to in the three or four days while
Speaker 1: they're out.
Speaker 2: What is your view, and I'm imagining that you would
Speaker 2: base it on what police have told you, police that
Speaker 2: are right at the front line of this, on where
Speaker 2: drugs fit into this, with drug use that alters behavior,
Speaker 2: and so the keenness to obtain more drugs, which also
Speaker 2: have influences behavior. It makes you more desperate to do stuff.
Speaker 2: Is that A big.
Speaker 1: Element from my experience is when we're talking youth criminals,
Speaker 1: it's not a massive cohort of it. Yes, there are
Speaker 1: some that are heavily addicted to ice, and I spoke
Speaker 1: to someone whose son has been on ICE for five
Speaker 1: months and he's midway through his teens. That's as bad
Speaker 1: as it gets. Pretty much. Some will go and smoke
Speaker 1: some marijuana with some friends, which some would say is
Speaker 1: on the lesser end of the scale, and that's not
Speaker 1: the driver of their offending. I think the driver is
Speaker 1: just mainly the thrill of it. Yes, there is an
Speaker 1: element of selling vehicles and handbags and clothes for some
Speaker 1: harder illicit drugs, but I wouldn't say most or even
Speaker 1: majority of them. I think it's really the thrill of
Speaker 1: the chase.
Speaker 2: It's strange that we have this outbreak of behavior, almost
Speaker 2: as if it's viral, you know, it's spread from one
Speaker 2: of the other. And I presume that every generation has
Speaker 2: examples of similar stuff. After probably after World War Two,
Speaker 2: we had baby boomer youths turn up in numbers because
Speaker 2: their parents had a lot of kids, and I can
Speaker 2: remember gangs of skinheads and sharpies and all the rest
Speaker 2: of it roaming around doing bad stuff. So it's not
Speaker 2: as if errant youth and juvenile delinquents there are anything new.
Speaker 2: And probably you could trace that all the way back
Speaker 2: to the colonial era, where we had bush rangers and
Speaker 2: alaricans and lauts and layobouts running around the streets dishing
Speaker 2: it out, you know, with bricks and boots, as old
Speaker 2: poem went. So it's tempting to think that this is
Speaker 2: new and awful, and yet in some way it's probably
Speaker 2: happened every twenty or thirty years in some sort of
Speaker 2: wave motion. I hope that's true.
Speaker 1: I hate blaming COVID for things It was really prevalent
Speaker 1: four or five years ago for some of us, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a cop out for some to blame
Speaker 1: COVID and the lockdowns for some things. I just spoke
Speaker 1: to four mothers of teenage offenders in the suburbs and
Speaker 1: they all had one thing in common, and they said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to blame COVID. I really don't, but
Speaker 1: my son or daughter was locked up inside for so
Speaker 1: long and they had so many rules and regulations around them.
Speaker 1: And once they got out, that was great, but then
Speaker 1: they just went nuts. They wanted to see everything. They
Speaker 1: wanted to hang out at all times of the day
Speaker 1: and night. They wanted to meet all these new people.
Speaker 1: They didn't want any structure in their life anymore. They
Speaker 1: didn't return to community sport. They didn't want to go
Speaker 1: to basketball at four o'clock, they didn't want to go
Speaker 1: to cricket at nine o'clock on Saturday. They don't live hard,
Speaker 1: live fast. They were sick of being told what to do,
Speaker 1: and they just quote went nuts.
Speaker 2: It sort of ruined the structure in their lives by
Speaker 2: having too much of it. Yeah, they've been imprisoned in
Speaker 2: a sense.
Speaker 1: And I don't like blaming that for everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of people will blame it, but I think
Speaker 1: I think it's a fair and reason argument. This time.
Speaker 2: It's easy to forget for anybody that's an adult, formed
Speaker 2: adult that's over the age of twenty five or something,
Speaker 2: to forget what it's like to not be twenty five
Speaker 2: or thirty five or forty five, to be fourteen, fifteen
Speaker 2: and sixteen is it's a goat's head soup of hormones
Speaker 2: and all the rest of it, peer pressure, the biological
Speaker 2: imperative to run around with other kids the same age,
Speaker 2: all that stuff which was suppressed for you know, essentially
Speaker 2: a couple of years, which is a massive amount of
Speaker 2: time for people that age. I thought it was sort
Speaker 2: of a nice chance not to go into work. But
Speaker 2: I'm not the problem. No, it's a problem when you've
Speaker 2: got kids that age basically cooped up. Looking at the
Speaker 2: offenders as groups of people, do you see any particular
Speaker 2: trends or groups or you know, even male versus female.
Speaker 2: Are there many girls involved?
Speaker 1: Well, I think they're becoming increasingly involved in this, and
Speaker 1: this purely because of what the police will tell us
Speaker 1: who they've arrested. And we just sort of notice an
Speaker 1: increase in the amount of young girls being caught up
Speaker 1: in aig bergs and home invasions and car thefs and
Speaker 1: cigarette burglaries and things like that, and now I guess
Speaker 1: just joining in on the fun with everyone else. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty worrying that fourteen fifteen, sixteen year olds of
Speaker 1: both genders are being sort of caught up in this.
Speaker 1: Now it's not just the young rap back boys, it's
Speaker 1: young girl. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting trend, although I guess probably if we
Speaker 2: go back in history, the skinheads and all the rest
Speaker 2: of it, there always were girls around the edges or
Speaker 2: front and center, some of them sometimes. So Reagan, you're
Speaker 2: going to go now and you're going to go back
Speaker 2: and work on Suburbs under Siege, which is the Heralds campaign.
Speaker 2: Some of our listeners when they hear this, so that
Speaker 2: that campaign will be sort of over, but you can
Speaker 2: guarantee that the offending won't be over. So the story
Speaker 2: lives on and you, Reagan Hodge, are going to be
Speaker 2: working on it with your colleagues. We will here in
Speaker 2: that corner of the Herald Sun newsroom that's always really busy.
Speaker 1: It's always busy in that part of the room.
Speaker 2: Crime never sleeps. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is
Speaker 2: a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our
Speaker 2: producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 2: go to Haroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew
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