By Cam Lucadou-Wells
IT’S hard to imagine a certain soap opera’s ex-stickybeak tangling with the Apex Gang, but residents were urged to find “that piece of Mrs Mangel in you” at a 400-strong crime prevention gathering in Narre Warren.
What emergency services opposition spokesman Brad Battin meant was that residents should keep an eye out for each other.
It was the best form of surveillance, he told the grassroots Casey Crime Prevention Gathering at Sweeney Reserve on 10 September.
“Stop using the door inside your garage and make sure you know the neighbours in your street.
“Keep your curtains open and keep an eye out on the street.”
A resident later bailed up Mr Battin about the need for residents to be armed with guns to protect themselves from burgling gangs.
“If we start shooting, they’re not going to come back.”
Mr Battin replied: “It didn’t work in America. I have a friend who is a policeman over there. He says the best thing we’ve got here is there are no guns.”
Mr Battin said despite three local burglaries, a regular street barbecue helped him and his neighbours feel safer.
He noted Casey had two less full-time equivalent police despite its population growing 10,000 in the past 12 months and just one divisional van on night-shift.
It “sends a very bad message to offenders”, but residents could still “go a long way” to protect themselves, he said.
The crowd gave up their Saturday afternoon and ignored the lure of football finals out of concern for the spree of home invasions and other violent crime.
Event organiser Andrew Hartley had been recently traumatised after his Narre Warren home was invaded by a carload of burglars as his children slept inside.
Mr Hartley told the gathering he wanted the community to come together to “stop this scourge”.
“I may be either idealistic or naive, but as a community I’d like to see us looking out for each other,” he said to the applause of the crowd.
He urged residents to get alarms, CCTV and security doors because “we don’t live in the ‘70s anymore.”
“The one thing you want to do is protect your loved ones.”
Helen Van Den Berg, of Berwick, attended the event after her estate was hit by 26 break-ins in a fortnight recently.
Ms Van Den Berg said her neighbour was one of the victims. He had been watching TV at 10pm one night, found a gang of up to eight male intruders looting in the back of his house.
The burglar had got in through an unlocked back door, she said.
Having just survived a heart attack, Ms Van Den Berg shudders to think how she’d react in such a situation.
The spate of break-ins had prompted her and her husband Brian Millgate to install shutters on all their windows, and to dead-lock their doors at all times.
She’d like to see a revival of a Neighbourhood Watch-like movement in her street.
“Community participation is very important. If we band together and look out for each other, we can do wonders.
“We used to live in a community that everyone knew each other.
“These days people don’t socialise with their neighbours.”
James, of Beaconsfield, said there had been a break-in every second night in his estate in recent times. A nearby family home with two children had been burgled several times.
He wanted to see what action could be taken to stop the crimewave.
“It’s not the police’s fault. They catch them, but then (the offenders) get a slap on the wrists and they see them out doing the same thing later.”
