By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
CASEY Council will look into the feasibility of having the Endeavour Hills police station manned 24-hours a day.
The City of Casey resolved to write to Police Minister Wade Noonan to investigate this possibility after Cr Rafal Kaplon said the increasing population in the suburbs of Endeavour Hills, Hallam and Doveton had led to a “visible rise” in crime in the area.
In the last year, he said, the Endeavour Hills policing region had seen an alleged car-fire murder, deliberate school arson, and a shooting at the station itself.
After much deliberation of the intricacies of Cr Kaplon’s motion, the council agreed to write to both Minister Noonan and Shadow Police Minister Edward O’Donohue to “express the community’s need for the Endeavour Hills Police Station to be upgraded to a 24-hour station with the appropriate access, resources and staff”.
According to the most recent Casey crime statistics, there were 3840 family violence incidents reported in 2014 compared to 3561 in the previous year, while in the same period the number of motor vehicle thefts in the municipality per 100,000 residents rose from 215.5 to 248.5.
The statistics, co-ordinated for the first time by the independent Crime Statistics Agency, also indicated a 12.2 per cent rise in the total number of reported offences in Casey, from 15,460 in 2013 to 17,349 in 2014.
But Casey police’s local area commander Inspector Paul Breen said the size of the municipality had to be taken into account when considering the rise of reported family violence incidents in the region.
“The population is increasing nearly by 10,000 people per year in Casey and we’re trying to keep up as best we can,” Insp Breen said last month.
“Plus, police protocol around reporting family violence is very quick now. Over the years we’ve improved the processing.
“In the next 12 months we’ll try to stabilise those figures.”
In the same year it celebrated its 10th anniversary, the Endeavour Hills police station was the scene of the fatal shooting death of 18-year-old terrorism suspect Numan Haider last September.
Mr Haider, who it’s understood had his passport suspended roughly a week before the incident, was shot dead outside the station after he stabbed two police officers. It’s believed Mr Haider had been seen brandishing an ISIS flag outside Dandenong Plaza Shopping Centre in the days leading up to his death.
Meanwhile, last month, a body identified as Dung Tri Pham was found in a burnt-out car in Eumemmerring in a suspected murder.
It’s believed Mr Pham was known by police to be involved with drugs.
The gruesome discovery came a year after 34-year-old Rani Featherston’s murdered body was found a stone’s throw away in an industrial Doveton street off the Princes Highway. The investigation into her death is ongoing.
Earlier this year two teenagers were arrested in relation to a suspicious fire which gutted the disused Endeavour Hills Secondary College gym last November.
