THE PRESS MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1984. Police swoop in Square

Press, 17 December 1984, Page 12

THE PRESS MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1984. Police swoop in Square

The apprehension of at least 22 young people in Cathedral Square and the surrounding streets on Friday evening shows how concerted action can get results. About 30 uniformed police and a squad of detectives “saturated” the central city to detect and catch offenders, and to prevent offences. The need for drastic measures — expensive in time, money, and manpower — is an admission that violent crime by groups of marauding young thugs in and around Cathedral Square has got out of hand. The main target of the thugs is other young people, but they also attack and rob anyone that seems weaker or over whom the weight of numbers is likely to prevail. No one is safe and it seems to make little difference if it is day or night; but — true to their cowards’ colours — the thugs prefer to prey on the very young or the very old. Because of the risk to young children, the police have appealed to parents to ensure that their children are accompanied if they visit the central city. The warning is appropriate enough; but questions must be asked of the parents of the young thugs, too. According , to the police, most of the muggers are aged between 12 and 20, the majority of them being under 17. This age limit puts them in the jurisdiction of the Children and Young Persons Court when they are apprehended; more important, it discloses a lack of the parental control that should have prevented the problem arising. The police say that the muggings continue in spite of a high success rate in catching offenders. The police have caught almost half the offenders in the recent spate of robberies since the beginning of October, but the offending continues. This could suggest an almost inexhaustible pool of ruffians

replenishing the ranks as fast as the police can haul them in. Far more probable is the prospect that the young thugs who bash, headbutt, or menace their victims with knives care little about detection and apprehension. The admonitions of the Children and Young Persons Court are like water off a duck’s back. The court experience seems to be treated as nothing more than an irritating hiccup in their activities, or even as a matter for pride. As successful as Friday evening’s swoop by the police was, such tactics cannot be an answer to the problem. Saturation policing cannot continue for long. The police are right to put a high priority on stamping out crimes of violence in the heart of the city. Cathedral Square should be a place where law-abiding people and families can go without fear. The requirements of saturation policing place unacceptable demands on an already taxed police force and staff must be taken off other duties. Until these overgrown schoolyard bullies — or their parents — are shown the community’s disapproval of their criminal antics more clearly than hitherto, the offences will continue. The community depends, in the last resort, on the courts and the law to display its disapproval. No matter how efficient the police may be in apprehending young offenders, no permanent improvement is likely unless punishments can be found that deter repetition of offences. Where offenders are deemed to be too young to be punished adequately, parents should be prosecuted for their failure to control their children. Many offences on the streets may seem trivial, though they are seldom so to the victims. But when ordinary people cannot move round the inner city without fear, one of the community’s most fundamental freedoms is being eroded.