Changing face ofBy Philip Castle crime in the ACT

Canberra began to catch up with the rest of Australia in 1984... or at least that was the explanation of­fered for the sudden rise in violent crime highlighted that year and which has continued since.

Wollongong miners storm the doors of Kings Hall, Parliament House, in a wild demonstration on 26 October 1982.

As four bodies of a man, woman and two chldren were carried from a house in the quiet southern suburb of Richardson on 1 Aoril 1984, a neighbour said tear­fully, “I never thought I would see this sort of thing in Canberra."

Equally sad was the fact that the bodies had lain in the house for some four days before their grisly discovery.

The man ultimately convicted of these murders, Allen Douglas Thompson, of Queanbeyan, was then also charged and convicted of the murder of the woman victim’s two sisters in a previously staged car fire in 1980. He holds the dubious claim to having murdered the most people in the ACT.

Withn three weeks of the Richardson murders, city detectives were faced with solving vicious sexual assaults on two young students, a man and a woman, in the grounds of the Australian National University. The attacks were so savage that ambulance and police officers at­tending say they had not seen people survive after having been so badly tor­

tured. The assailants were caught shortly after at the South Coast and later con­victed. But there was little apparent motive.

In the decade since the formation of the AFP in 1979, Canberra people, their homes, businesses and vehicles have become the target of increasingly violent criminals. Gone are the days when it was safe to leave a home unlocked while out shopping, or the keys in a parked car or items on the front lawn. Canberra has changed from the days when it was

referred to as the ‘best lit paddock in Australia’; it is now a city where serious crime is part of its character.

Age of innocencePerhaps not quite as bad as its State

capital counterparts, but police officers working Canberra in the late 1980s know that it has the same problems which have changed the nature of policing almost everywhere. No-one at the beginning of the decade could have thought it would reach a point where the national capital’s most senior police officer, Assistant Commissioner Col Winchester, would be murdered as he arrived home in January 1989. As Commander Alan Mills said, it represented the end of the age of inno­cence.

One senior detective who had been with the former ACT Police before the formation of the AFP, said it was signifi­cant that quite junior detectives were now being assigned to murders, armed hold-ups and serious assaults much sooner in their careers. He blamed the rise in crime on social breakdowns where domestic violence was more common, the increasing use of violence in enter­tainment, particularly in explicit videos, and the isolation felt by many people who

Emergeicy services officers work to free the body of a 27-year-old Lyons man from the wreckage of his car after it crashed into a tree outside the National Press Club, Barton, on 3 April 1935.

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had moved to the ACT.Statistics can be misleading, but in

the three years before December 1983, there had been one reported murder; in the next 18 months there were nine. The year 1984 was a bad one, but the level of serious crime in the ACT continued to remain higher than it had in the early 1980s. To counter this, policing contin­ued to be effective; by mid-1989, with the exception of the Winchester murder, there were no outstanding unsolved recent major crimes.

Sought helpThe 1980s continued to see serious

crimes and incidents all too regularly. In February 1986, a Rivett family of four became the victims of a broken de facto relationship. A 16-year-old youth sur­vived but was seriously wounded. The attacker committed suicide.

The former de facto wife had sought help from the courts and the police to restrain the man only days before he killed her and her parents. Neither had the full power to protect her. Within weeks of the deaths, new legislation was rushed through the House of Represen­tatives setting up the new, more effec­tive domestic violence laws which give much more strength to the courts and officers to prevent domestic violence problems.

The protection of victims and pay­ment of compensation have become much more prominent issues. The two students subjected to the extreme as­saults at the university were both awarded compensation, the woman receiving $32,000. Some would consider the

amount far too small but it is a step in the right direction where victims of crime are often forgotten in the concern to rehabili­tate and provide for the offender.

In January 1985, a disturbed man took over a Civic gunshop and fired more than 300 shots into the streets, fortu­nately without injuring anyone, before he surrendered.

In October 1987, Grant Cameron, the son of then Senior Constable Bob Cameron, died after an assault at a school fete in Duffy, ACT. This and other incidents led to the formation in Can­berra of the local Victims of Crime Assis­tance League (VOCAL).

On 6 May 1988 John Shaker at­tempted a fraud on a building society in Civic and, when challenged, attempted an abduction. After threatening police, with a pistol, he was shot dead.

But it was not only crimes of violence that jumped — and stretched resources. There were major bushfires in the sur­rounding rural areas and in 1984-85 and again in 1985-86. Some were deliber­ately lit and one came very close to> the city centre with much of Black Mountain ablaze. Another across the border threat­ened Queanbeyan.

The fires showed no respect for bor­ders and the ACT emergency serv/ices often had to combine forces. Millions of dollars was lost in property damage and a man died near Googong dam in 1986. Also during the 1980s, there wais a series of arsons, mostly on shops.. An accidental fire razed the Manuka Village shopping complex in March 1984.

Canberra also saw an increase in fraud in various forms, but commonly by Taise or misused credit cards and cheqiues. Many were thought to be drug-related where the offender found this forrm of getting money for the habit easier tthan more direct acts of violence.

There were the continued expressions of dissent in Canberra with a serie;s of demonstrations, some large, with the most spectacular being a charge throiugh the Parliament House doors by Wolllon- gong miners in October 1982. Otther large demonstrations included farmters, Cockatoo Dockyard workers and Abo­riginals.

M Two young women continue to rermain 1 missing from the 1980s; Elizabeth Her- | fort, then aged 18, disappeared om 13 | June 1980 and while extensive investciga- ° tions have been held into her where­

abouts, she has not been found. Poiice believe it is likely she was murderred. Megan Mulquiney, aged 17, went muss-

Two major sieges were brought to successful conclusions in Canberra during 1984-85. Pictured is one of a number of police cars that were peppered by rifle fire and extensively damaged during a siege in Civic in January 1985.

After the murder of his parents and sister, Darren Oliver, 15, is taken seriously wounded from his home in Rivett on 12 February 1986. He suffered permanent injury but survived.

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ing from Woden Plaza on 28 july 1984 after finishing work at midday. She has not been seen since.

River drowningIn November 1986, a boy aged 13

was drowned in the flooded Murrum- bidgee River near Canberra, despite desperate attempts by AFP Rescue Squad members to save him as he clung to a dinghy for more than an hour and a half. The boy had been accompanied by adults. A 59-year-old man was presumed drowned in the same stretch of river in April 1989.

But violence continued almost un­abated to the point that by 1989 mur­ders were becoming too frequent. The naked bodies of two women were found within 10km of each other in two sepa­rate murders 18 months apart in bush- land to the west of Canberra. Deborah Bush was found murdered in January 1987 and her husband was later con­victed of her murder. In April 1988, Bente Mossessen, of Queanbeyan, was found murdered after being last seen alive outside a Civic nightclub. A man was charged with her murder but was later found not guilty by a jury.

Other attacks showed a callousness not seen before; one victim, picked at random, was beaten with a tomato stake allegedly more than 50 times. He sur­vived. The attack followed the murder of another man who was dumped in grass­land near Lyons in 1988.

Violence showed itself in other forms with the bizarre suicide of a de facto couple in Uriarra forest in October 1987 where, by an intricate use of 120metres of rope, the couple were decapitated.

There were violent demonstrations where flaming poles were thrust at po­lice, bringing a new, more sinister dimen­sion to these protests. This was followed by a series of alleged fire-bombings of diplomats’ cars and property. These matters are still before the courts.

Community watchCanberra saw a series of extremely

violent sexual assaults in 1988, including one on a girl aged 11 and others by the use of a large knife. Some occurred in daylight. It was thought at first that they may have involved the same attacker. However, all the assaults were solved with the conviction of a number of sepa­rate offenders.

During this period, there were some improvements, most notably in traffic

Police grapple with demonstrators outside the South African Embassy on 16 June 1986.

accident numbers which decreased with the introduction of random breath test­ing in December 1982.

Neighbourhood Watch was readily accepted by the Canberra community during the 1980s and today all suburbs are covered. It has produced a drop in house break-ins and the NRMA has an­nounced for the first time a drop in house insurance premiums.

What has baffled police and sociolo­gists is why violent crime has come to Canberra. What changed during the 1980s?

The senior officer responsible for the ACT during most of the past decade, Assistant Commissioner ValMcConaghy, now retired, said at the time: “There is no doubtthat we have seen an increase in all forms of crime in the ACT. If I knew the

exact reason why this has suddenly changed I would be doing something about it. If you look atthe murders alone, nearly all were unpredictable and having extra police about would not have made any difference. We think the community as a whole has to take more responsibil­ity, too.

Growing up“We have found, as our Neighbour­

hood Watch program spreads out fur­ther, that people are coming forward telling us things that we should have known months ago. The police cannot act alone. The public are nearly always its eyes and ears.... Sadly, Canberra appears to be growing up,” he said.

Many police blame the increase in street crime on drugs and their high

Police and ambulance officers carry out a 15-year-old boy who fell over a cliff near Mount Ainslie on 3 January, 1984.

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prices, which means heavy heroin users need about $ 1000 a week to pay for their habits. For men this often means break- ins, creditfraudorcarthefts. Forwomen, it often means prostitution. For the dealers it means high profits for a rela­tively low risk: dealers often insulate themselves from criminal acts thus avoid­ing charges. Almost inevitably the con­victed user refuses to reveal his sup­plier’s identity because hefearsthe dealer more than the law, and he may need another supply.

On a broader note, statistics do not showthe human anguish caused by crime such as that felt by a family in Macgregor on 16 November 1983 when a father murdered his three young sons and then took his own life. Or the sense that some people feel that nothing can be done.

After the bodies were found at Richardson, some neighbours were asked whether they had noticed the family’s absence. Their rather anguished reply was that it didn’t pay to become involved “because look what could happen”.

At the time of the Rivett murders, the neighbours had heard some disturbing

noises but did nothing because distur­bances there were frequent.

Mr McConaghy said part of the suc­cess of Neighbourhood Watch had been that it had helped establish more com­munity relationships, which he hoped would mean that more people were alert to unusual activities about them. Police figures show that in areas where Neigh­bourhood Watch has been established

for some time, break-ins have fallen by as much as 47 per cent.

With a population of more than 280,000, Canberra has to accept that its crime rate has increased and changed. What the police see and the statistics are showing, is that the sudden jump in serious crime in 1980s is now part of the city’s character. ■

Rescue Squad members attend a badly injured man at Pierce's Creek on 7 March 1984 after a fallen tree struck the vehicle m which he was sitting.

Neighbourhood WatchWhen residents of the Canberra

suburb of Kambah rallied to a call to take the first steps in their own community-based crime prevention program, the response was surpris­ing.

That call, in September 1984, saw the implementation of the ACT’s first Neigh­bourhood Watch Scheme. And in time it became one of the AFP’s most success­ful community policing achievements.

The pilot program in Kambah achieved a recorded 67 per cent decrease in the offence of residential burglary.

In January 1985, three more pro­grams were started in Campbell, O’Con­nor and a second area in Kambah. The response in these areas was exceptional and more areas were implemented at the rate of six a month.

By April the following year, 49 pro­grams were operating in the ACT, cover­ing 29,216 homes and about 90,000 residents.

The success has been such that by February this year, 132 programs had

been introduced, covering 79,000 homes and 237,600 people — representing more than three-quarters of the popula­tion of Canberra.

Extension of the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme is planned so that eventually all newer suburbs will be included as they become more settled.

Target crimeThe original Neighbourhood Watch

Scheme was first established in America in 1972 by the National Sheriffs Associa­tion with financial assistance of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. This created thousands of local residen­tial crime prevention programs in which individual citizens would make their home less inviting targets to crime by forming neighbourhood groups to liaise with law enforcement agencies. Burglary was selected as the target crime, because it accounted for 30 per cent of serious criminal offences committed. It was a major crime that could be prevented to a degree by citizens protecting their prop­

erty and dwellings, and it was a crime in which victims who caught criminals in the act of stealing could be killed or injured.

The scheme was adopted in England and Waies in 1983.

Victoria was the first State in Australia to introduce it in 1983. Organisers there designed the familiar green and white Neighbourhood Watch logo to represent the community and police working to­gether.

Since then, the scheme has been or is being introduced into all States and Territories.

Development of the program in the ACT has been focussed on community caring. This involves minimising the incidence of preventable crime, increas­ing the reporting of crime and suspi­cious activity, improving the quality of information given to police, improving the level of household and personal security, and encouraging the commu­nity to identify valuable property by engraving easily identified numbers on it.

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