Community safety and crime

On Thursday just gone, we had the first meeting of the Knox Local Safety Committee. This is something that's known well to this Council. It's a new initiative. It's led by our hardworking local police, and is an initiative that's strongly supported by Council. It's not a talkfest. It's a very action-focused committee that wants to hear, and the police were there in numbers. I think we had Mel Darke, our Local Area Commander, and the senior brass from each of our local stations. They were there to hear from Council, and to hear from community groups, about what they're seeing and hearing when it comes to safety issues across Knox.

We've all heard loud and clear that this is an issue for our residents and our communities. People want Council to be as active, and taking as much action, as we can, and supporting the Local Safety Committee is something we're absolutely all in on. I attended in my capacity as the Deputy Mayor at the time, but the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of today will be the formal members of Council. But it's great, as part of the terms of reference, that all councillors will be invited as observers to the Local Safety Committee. So I look forward to continuing to attend.

I attended the police safety forum on Thursday the 12th of June with Councillor Kennett. One of my takeaways was the repeat recommendation of our police to use Crime Stoppers as a primary reporting tool. It's always possible to go into stations and report things. But even for things like antisocial behaviour or speeding issues that you might perceive in your street or surrounds, they really drummed into attendees that Crime Stoppers is still the best way for them to collect that intelligence and have it passed on. I was asking, on behalf of residents in Tirhatuan, what is the best way to raise with police concerns about antisocial behaviour in parks or areas, or a sense that a street might have a problem with speeding, and Crime Stoppers was their number one suggestion as part of a few different tools. That stuck with me.

And I think it's maybe time to consider a new community safety committee of Council. Councillor Kennett and I talked about that with police on the night. There's a real appetite on behalf of police to better align with Council and support each other's efforts, particularly around youth engagement, and I think there's a big gap for Council to do more in that space. So I look forward to progressing that. On the same day I chaired a meeting of the Community Safety, Health and Wellbeing Advisory Committee.

We had a Knox Community Safety, Health and Wellbeing Advisory Committee meeting on Thursday the 13th. That was an interesting one. We did discuss the latest crime stats for Knox as part of that meeting, with VicPol and with support of Council officers. It was no surprise to anyone in that room that crime is trending up, and in some particular categories trending much higher. Not quite at pre-COVID peaks, but certainly moving in the wrong direction. Now, you didn't really need to see the stats to know that was the case, because anyone that's been out talking to the community over the past year or so absolutely got a sense of that unease and concern around safety. And this committee, which I'm really pleased to be chairing, is really looking at the local government opportunity to look at policy and practice in meeting the police in their work around prevention.

And just a quick shout out: tomorrow morning is Coffee with a Cop at Stud Park in Rowville. It's 10:00 am at Quirky Bean Cafe. It's a great opportunity to connect with our wonderful, hardworking local police, tomorrow morning at 10:00 am.