More Police Is Not Enough to Stem the Flow of Street Violence

More police is not enough to stem the flow of street assaults *A trio of thugs beats a stranger in a subway, punting his head like a football. An 18 year old looks the wrong way at another outside a party and is punched, stomped and beaten with a cane by 10 other party attendees*. A respected doctor takes an evening stroll and has his skull fractured with a baseball bat. A suburban football player is choked unconscious at a fast food joint. Unsuspecting young men are being felled, hospitalized and sometimes killed for a backward glance or a misspoken word. More police on our streets is not enough to stop the amount of violence and assaults that occur every week. Victoria Police have recently admitted that since the year 2000, attacks by 2 or more thugs have jumped almost 70% to more than 2100 a year in Victoria alone. And this isn’t just a problem that can be solved by putting a few extra coppers out on the street at night. Today, I will be informing you of how else to tackle the issue of street violence other than putting more police out in the open to protect people. Police alone will not quell the rising level of assaults. Other measures need to be explored in order to significantly reduce the number of street attacks. I will be explaining what else should be looked at by our Government in order to reduce assaults. Not only should more police be put out on our streets, but there should also be better education to young adolescence about the consequences of street violence, as well as an anti-violence campaign to educate the public and make them aware of the ramifications of such actions. Tougher laws regarding the consumption of alcohol should also be looked at. There have been calls for a TAC style advertising campaign to drive home the realities and consequences of street violence. Les Twentyman, who runs the 20th Man Foundation, has said that we now need to accept that street violence is a major crisis, and we need to tackle it like drink driving