Colin Flaherty (Author of Don't Make the Black Kids Angry) Commentary News Video "Gangs Crisis of Melbourne Australia, police concerns over African youths" Sudanese Somali Illegal immigrants 5 times the violence and crime rates Victoria Police Department Commissioner Tim Cartwright "Is Melbourne in the grip of African crime gangs? The facts behind the lurid headlines"
Victoria is having a debate about gangs. Specifically, it is debating whether it is appropriate to call groups of young people who are predominantly from African backgrounds a “gang” and, so named, what should be done about it.
It’s also having a debate about race, which is being waged in the comment sections of front-page articles on gang violence, and on social media, where comments like “stop immigration until this mess is sorted” populate Victoria police’s official Facebook page.
Both debates are linked to a perceived increase in large-scale violent offences committed by young people of African appearance, most of whom have been linked to Melbourne’s Sudanese migrant community.
Media coverage of the issue, led by the News Corp tabloid the Herald Sun, has dubbed Victoria “a state of fear” and reported that it could undermine the incumbent Labor government’s chances in the November state election.
On Monday the prime minister weighed in, saying at a press conference in Sydney that “growing gang violence and lawlessness in Victoria” was “a failure of the Andrews government”.
However, police say that crime from African “street gangs” is an ongoing, not growing, problem, and also that calling these groups “gangs” might be overstating the issue.
What makes a gang? Patton’s preferred term is “networked criminal offenders”. which is harder to work into a headline.
Patton’s comments followed an interview by fellow deputy commissioner Andrew Crisp last week, who urged the media not to label groups of “young thugs” as “gangs”, saying: “I don’t accept for one minute that we do have gangs.”
He added: “I urge you [the media] not to play up to the ego of these young people by calling them a gang, because they’re not a gang.”
Patton on Monday attempted to both maintain that argument and say that police did not shy away from the use of the term, saying: “They’re behaving like street gangs, so let’s call them that. That’s what they are.”
That narrative is underpinned by race, Kelly says. And while he says it’s possible to have a debate about different ethnic groups without sliding into racism, in this case, in many areas, the debate has become “clearly racist.”
“That to me is a far more dangerous issue,” he said. “When it becomes a racialised moral panic, then we start to see the things that lead toward Cronulla over 10 years ago. That was instigated by the a very similar array of panics.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/is-melbourne-in-the-grip-of-african-gangs-the-facts-behind-the-lurid-headlines
Calla Wahlquist
Tue 2 Jan 2018 13.00 EST Last modified on Tue 13 Mar 2018 12.00 EDT
