John Silvester is a Walkley-award winning crime writer and columnist. A co-author of the best-selling books that formed the basis of the hit Australian TV series Underbelly, Silvester is also a regular guest on 3AW with his "Sly of the Underworld" segment.
Police will boost night patrols, blitz violence hot spots, introduce a new call-out system and support a "victims-first" approach, as part of a ten-year plan to tackle Victoria's growing crime rate.
For starters, let's plan as we do for roads and housing and put law and order policy beyond the election cycle.
When Victorian drug investigators raided the city nightclub Two Floors Up in early April, they were expecting to find thousands of ecstasy tablets, methamphetamine and cash.
In a big country town cops tend to stick together. They share rented homes, support local sports clubs and drink in the same pubs. They share tragedies and triumphs and in the good districts newbies benefit from the experience of the station elders.
Fleeing suspects who ram occupied police cars or police on foot should be charged with attempted murder, Police Association Secretary Ron Iddles says.
Sadly the true crime shelves in most bookshops are inhabited by paperbacks of dubious quality containing cliche-ridden chapters on reheated topics. I should know as I have written many of them.
How do you tell grieving parents they will never find justice and there will be no last minute miracles? How do you tell the honest and the decent that life is unfair, that logic doesn't always work and prayers can go unanswered?
Is there a more polarising figure in Australia than Cardinal George Pell?
And so the angry, the nasty, the easily manipulated and the stupid head to foreign suburbs looking for what they think they have been denied.
Peter Bellion has saved the lives of hundreds he has never met and observed the death of thousands he couldn't help. Perhaps that is why he fought the signs the job he loved was eating him alive.
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