Crime and perspective in Townsville

Maybe today's headline news in The Bulletin may finally give the city's 'opinion makers' a real perspective on crime and law and order in Townsville.

Contrary to the wedge first inserted by Mooney all those years ago and repeated ad nauseam ever since by the likes of Cr Dale Last and of course The Townsville Bulletin, the real crime/law-and-order issue in this city (as in any other) is not a few homeless people looking untidy and (perhaps) drinking in full view of the general public (and the 'opinion makers' in particular) or a few teenagers in the western suburbs meeting in public spaces at night or having the occasional brawl or leaving the occasional graffiti tag.

As is very clear from today's story, the locus for crime in this city (as in most) is the night club district where the purveyors of and profiteers from legal drugs provide the venues, culture and environment for the illegal drug traffickers.  As has been the case since the days of Al Capone, they're also great places to lander money.

Arguably these dealers - the legal and the illegal - are some of the city's greatest social menaces.  The police understand this, that is why they devoted so many resources to this last operation (on top of what they have to normally devote to Flinders Street night-in and night-out).

Perhaps now Cr Last and The Bully will finally get it too?

PS: Having again broken a lifetime habit and read today's editorial in The Bully, maybe it will be a while before they get it.  Reading that 'opinion-making' piece you'll see that the problem is young people (2 out of 11 identified in the article were below 20 years), that responsibility rests with parents (tell that to the aging parents of the over-40s who were arrested) and that the public policy response should be an education campaign!  Doh!