I live in Griffith NSW 550km west of Sydney population 24 000. I cant beleive that a 17 year old was bashed to death 3am after new years eve 100 metres from the Griffith police station (in the same street on the same side of the road), at the towns major taxi rank (well lit) and in Griffiths main street.
Where were Griffiths police ? Where were Griffiths taxi's ? (I would have thought new years eve would have been all hands on deck)
News reports that their is at least one serious assualt a week in Griffith usualy on or around Banna avenue. Its surprising considering you see so much overt policing around the town during the day concentrating on traffic offences, but I suppose that is raising revenue for the state government unlike the tedious and non profit patroling Griffith at night and prevention of crime
Hopefully no local police were seconded to Sydney for new years eve celebrations and crowd control at the test.
This young guy came in from Rankin Springs population 70km north of Griffith population under 500 to have a good night. He deserved to be allowed to have one.

Such attacks are none to rare in the UK acker, of course that won't make Aussies feel any better, but killings are commonplace over here.When hanging was in force for unlawfull killing, such crimes made the headlines, no I am afrain they hardly make the front page.

__________________
Ern

I wonder how much our police department spent on bringing the London cheif constable out all expenses paid for the Sydney test ?
I wish they had of installed come more CCTV cameras with the money in our main street, or maybe some bigger windows for our police station.
The crime is disgusting where ever it occurs Griffith, London, Los Angelas or Tehran.

Mate, what could the police have done? Unless they were at the actual spot, there is no way they would have had time to do anything about it. It was just one of those random incidents that little can be done about. Having cameras in the main street would not have stopped it.

Well, I wasn't there and I've not read any more about it than appears in this thread. But I also wonder if it is really on to blame the police for the crime. My home town in Hampshire is about the same size as Griffith, and a crime like this would hit hard in the community. But I am pretty sure that our three or four coppers would have no real chance of preventing such an incident (especially as our local nick is not even open during the nighttime: our night time cover for police services is 20km away in Southampton, a city of about 200,000 people). I feel sorry for Acker and all the people of Griffith - including the local police.

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

Not blaming the police as individuals, but rather the policing system that over emphasis police officers spend most of their time doing traffic infringement duties (government revenue raising) rather than crime prevention duties such as walking or driving the beat at night.
The government here prefers to see police handing out $180.00 on the spot motor infringement fines rather than putting wayward youths off the street in the early hours of the morning and getting no $

OK, I understand your view. I don't know enough about the NSW government to say whether you are right or wrong.

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

This is a dreadful incident - tragic loss of a life.

Killings are not 'common-place' - and murder of strangers is still rare. Around 800 people are murdered in Britain every year - 800 too many but much less than those killed on our roads. A large proportion of these murders are as a result of domestic incidents or drug/gang related. People are not routinely murdered by strangers in the street - to suggest such a thing is a gross distortion of the facts. The fact is that stories of brutality do make the newspapers - particularly the Conservative press. Think of the police officers who were tragically murdered, or Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor. Or the murder of the women in Ipswich - these are huge stories which horrify us, but they are mercifully rare. The figure in the United States, where around 75 per cent of states retain the death penalty, is somewhere in the region of 16,000. I was in New York recently. Just up the road, in Atlantic City, three women who worked as prostitutes had been murdered. It made a couple of columns in the NY Times. We are lucky to live in a very safe country, where, thankfully, the barbaric practice of capital punishment has been abolished.

It's inhuman, inhumane, morally monstrous, and does not act as a deterrent.

Thanks for restoring the balance a bit there, FC! You're right: there is little comparison between the murders per head of population anywhere in Europe and the US. Thankfully, Europe is not yet a complete hell. And having capital punishment removed from the statute books in 27 countries is certainly something of which the EU can be proud, in my opinion.

__________________
Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan