General News
19 December, 2024
Police, cameras and action
INCREASING police numbers is the main priority for Mareeba Shire Council in 2025, Mayor Angela Toppin declared this week.
Responding to statewide annual crime statistics which gave a poor report card for Mareeba, including a high number of repeat offenders, she said she would take real data to the new state government and demand it “look after” its police force.
“I want more police officers, that’s the one I’m going for,” she said.
“If you try and fight too many battles you lose the lot. Go for one and go all bent.”
Mayor Toppin said the Council had successfully advocated for more police with the former Police Minister Mark Ryan and had secured three additional officers for Mareeba, and two more for Kuranda, with the prospect of four more officers deployed in Mareeba over the next three years.
“But it’s not enough. It is not enough,” Mayor Toppin said. “The police here are just wrapped up with domestic violence, so that may be ... why sometimes police can’t get there.”
As well as increasing police numbers, Council has also been pushing for funding to help set up CCTV cameras in small townships.
“We don’t have the $2 million that Cairns has to put in to CCTV,” Mayor Toppin said. “We’ll be chasing that up with the new government.
“We have a program where we give $1500 towards a small business that wants to install CCTV but asking the rate payers here to fork out another million dollars on CCTV? Well, where do we think we’ll be with that.”
Mayor Toppin said behind the scenes, much had been accomplished over the past year in tackling crime, of which she was extremely proud, and the community needed to know about.
Council had successfully advocated for a youth justice officer in Mareeba which has helped with case management.
“Before, they used to travel from Atherton so there was a 20-30 minute drive before they even got here to deal with anything, and then they’d drive back,” she said.
“We were able to advocate for a Domestic Violence Embedded Worker in Mareeba. It was only going to be trialled in Cairns and we weren’t going to get one,” Mayor Toppin said.
“We jumped up and down quite a lot, and produced the statistics here, so we got that embedded worker, and police are saying it’s helping them a lot. They assist with welfare, victim support and free up police to deal with crime and legal matters.”
Another area close to the Mayor’s heart, is getting a domestic violence safe house in Mareeba.
She said Council had strongly supported a grant submission by Mareeba Community Housing, for federal funding for domestic and family violence residential units.
“It looks like they’re getting a bit of a look in. We are doing a lot of hard work supporting that, as are the police.”
Youth re-engagement was also high on the list, and again, collaborative advocacy is bringing exciting results.
“Both Mareeba High School and Mareeba State Schools will be receiving funding for new re-engagement models for youth at risk to get them off the street and back into schools,” she said.
“When I was a principal this didn’t even exist, so this is a really good bit of news.”
One of the backbones to these successes had been the creation of the Collaborative Safety Committee, which the Mayor chairs, and which meets three times a year.
“It’s all the inter-agencies that deal with youth, the Queensland Police has a big part in it, the schools are there, housing and other inter-agencies,” Mayor Toppin said.
