Melbourne's African gangs - racist fear mongering?
Melbourne’s African youth crime has been extensively covered in the media after several incidents occurring last month. (i)
An enormous brawl, reportedly involving 60 youths of African Appearance, erupted in a St.Kilda Mcdonalds on the 13th of December, with assaults and robberies allegedly occurring.(ii)
On the 20th of December, four girls held a party at a rented AirBnb property, resulting in young men turning up and trashing the house. Walls and furniture were damaged, as were cars outside the property. Police had rocks pelted at them upon arrival and deployed heavily armed tactical police, a dog squad and a helicopter.
The aftermath revealed the acronym MTS or ‘Menace to Society’ tagged throughout the house, causing police to link the vandalism to a gang in Melbournes outer west.(iii)
On the 26th of December a police officer was assaulted by a gang of youths of African appearance, resulting in the charging of a 16 year old.(iv) Osman Faruqi of Junkee.com, claims media and politicians’ ‘obsession’ with African gangs is “racist fear-mongering”, condemning the relatively small media response to a Christmas day party on Little Bay beach:
”Compare the response to these alleged crimes to the way the media covered the huge beach brawl in Sydney on Christmas Day. Three thousand people, predominantly backpackers, gathered on Little Bay beach, broke the law by drinking in an alcohol free zone and scuffled with police who were attempting to break up the party….(if their skin was a different colour I imagine we would have called them “rioters”)…no state or federal politicians felt the need to respond, despite the fact thousands of immigrants had broken the law and two police officers had been assaulted, and the story disappeared after one day.”(v)
The source Faruqi uses for this ‘huge beach brawl’ describes nothing of the sort.
According to ABC(vi), around three thousand gathered on Little Bay Beach to drink, breaking liquor ban laws and resulting in police being called, though most did not ‘scuffle with police’.
Two officers suffered minor injuries after allegedly being struck with bottles, and were treated at the scene. Two young women were arrested. Backpackers at the party claim partygoers only became disruptive after unnecessary force by police and residents of the area said most of the crowd was "well-behaved" and were "singing and happy".
To call the scene a ‘huge beach brawl’ sounds like a false comparison.
If one attempts to compare the Christmas Day party to crimes committed by African gangs, the contrasts are overwhelming. Melbournes Moomba Festival was the target of organised riots for two consecutive years in March 2016-2017. Footage of the 2016 riots show large groups of young men rushing Melbourne CBD and starting fights in the area, with one witness describing it as “gangs running from one place to another”. Another witness described it as “a very chaotic scene” and “a stampede”(vii)
Police dubbed the behaviour ‘abhorrent and violent’, with festival goers being forced to find cover in nearby buildings after gang members began to use chairs as weapons, resulting in one hospitalisation. In 2017, similar events occurred but heavy police presence ensured the riot was kept under control. However, 9 people were arrested for possessing weapons, including knives, a taser and a knuckle-duster.(viii) Despite making absurd comparisons between the violent Moomba riots and the Christmas day party, Faruqi claims the effort of the left is “about injecting reality in the discussion”.
Other media sources take issue with the label of ‘gangs’, The Guardian consulting Deputy Police Commissioner Shane Patton for a definition.
Patton prefers the term ‘networked criminal offenders’, claiming the gang-crime unit was established to target “high-level organised crime gangs.”
He takes issue with referring to the young men as gangs, so as not to “play up the ego” of the culprits. Not feeding into the egos of these young men is understandable, though there is reason to use the gang label.
The police definition of gangs aside, some of these groups are committing organised crime under a banner (Apex or MTS), the Moomba festival riots and recent party crashers being an example of this.
When groups of young people are committing crime, regardless of whether it’s high level organised crime, the ‘gang’ label is hardly farfetched. Looking at Melbourne's African crime more generally, statistics of Sudanese born criminals are the best available source.(ix)
A number of news outlets have correctly reported that Sudanese born people only make up about 1.5% of criminal offenders The same news outlets also concede, correctly, that Sudanese born people make up only about 0.1% of the Victorian population, meaning they commit crime at a rate close to 15 times what is expected. Ozman Faruqi of Junkee argues that the low criminal offender figure of 1.5% doesn’t “seem to align with the intense media and political response to the so-called crisis” Though if one is to break the crime up by type of offence, the figures are even more disproportionate in some crimes.
The ABC broke down the number of crimes committed by 10-18 year olds in Victoria(x), albeit in an attempt to downplay the rate of Sudanese crime, but statistics reveal that from 2012-2016, young Sudanese born men were responsible for 5.1% of home invasions, 2.8% of car thefts and 8.2% of aggravated robberies.
The Guardian also reports that Sudanese (not controlled for age) make up 6% of offenders for riot and affray. There’s an important detail not acknowledged by sources reporting these crime statistics - the Sudanese crime rate isn’t actually being recorded. Victoria does not collect crime statistics by race or ethnicity(xi), so police and media must resort to the rate of Sudanese born offenders, meaning thousands of Sudanese are not being factored into these crime stats. According to 2016 census data, roughly 12,541 people of Sudanese ancestry live in Victoria(xii), but only 8,415 of these are Sudanese born(xiii). When crime statistics are considered, roughly 25% of Sudanese in Victoria are not being included.
Combine this information with the fact that the largest influx of Sudanese refugees occurred between 2001 and 2004, the population jumping from just 667 in 2001, to 6147 in 2003-4.(xiv)
Since then, the Sudanese born population has only increased by a few thousand, but the total number of Sudanese ancestry has doubled, likely as a result of childbirth.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Victorian police once claimed that a “large cohort” of the Apex gang were Australian born, and that the young men who rioted at the Moomba festival were as young as 12, 20 of the 24 arrests made at the 2016 event being minors. If the Sudanese who arrived in 2003-4 had children that year or in the next few coming years, said children would be between 12 and 15 years old today.
If any of these Australian born Sudanese are involved in crime, they are not being included in the commonly used crime statistics. Groups of young, African men are displaying a dangerous disregard for authority, and an overall desire to disrupt social cohesion.
When Peter Dutton made a comment about Melbourne residents being “scared to go out to restaurants at night..”(xv) he was likely being hyperbolic to make a point: crimes like the Moomba riots put law abiding civilians at risk.
Police refusing to use the ‘gang’ label because these groups are not engaging in high level organised crime actually further highlights the problem.
High level gangs may be much more cautious and less likely to affect civilians with their activities, whereas these loosely organised groups show much less caution, making them more of a threat to the general public. If certain journalists continue denying the problems facing Melbourne and the government refuses to collect statistics identifying the problem groups, matters could grow much worse. Sources:
(i): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/is-melbourne-in-the-grip-of-african-gangs-the-facts-behind-the-lurid-headlines (ii): http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/wild-brawl-at-st-kilda-fast-food-restaurant/news-story/bf2df0f815f7351ca438a8cc05b59c2a
(iii): http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-20/werribee-airbnb-party-police-pelted-with-rocks/9275064 (iv): https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/police-officer-assaulted-by-youth-in-melbourne-as-fight-night-feared/news-story/701d5201cd44091fbf82fe137e88449a
(v): http://junkee.com/african-gangs-australian-politics/141206
(vi): http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-26/christmas-revellers-charged-with-assault-little-bay/9285574 (vii): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/14/melbourne-street-brawl-blamed-on-apex-gang-after-moomba-festival
(viii): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/12/moomba-festival-police-arrest-53-and-use-pepper-spray-to-control-brawls
(ix): https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/media-centre/news/correction-of-country-of-birth-data-incorrectly-reported-and-attributed-to-the (x): http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-04/statistics-raise-questions-about-calls-to-deport-youth-offenders/8087 (xi): http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-20/victoria-police-consider-introducing-race-data-collection/8101430
(xii): http://profile.id.com.au/australia/ancestry?WebID=110 (xiii): http://profile.id.com.au/australia/birthplace?WebID=110 (xiv): http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/who-let-in-the-sudanese-amanda-vanstone/news-story/9497646aaac16f3fdfa11673d2a12ea4
(xv): https://www.sbs.com.au/news/melbourne-people-scared-to-go-out-at-night-dutton-on-african-gangs
