’Madness': Household knives are routinely being wielded with brutal and fatal consequences in schoolyard disputes, street crimes, and public brawls.
Illustration: Aresna Villanueva
But those operations have failed to prevent the exponential rise in injuries related to knife violence. More than two dozen stabbings have already been reported since the start of 2023, including a wild melee in a public park between groups of teenagers that left a 13-year-old and a 14-year–old with serious injuries.in her inner suburban home, allegedly by her teenage son and a friend.
A police officer working to combat youth and knife violence, who asked not to be named for fear of losing their job for speaking out, said knife-related crime and violence was “as bad as it’s ever been”, with knives being found everywhere, including school grounds. “The increase in knife crime, particularly, and young people taking knives to school has become a much bigger issue than it was when we started,” said Tracie Alborough, a youth worker at YSAS.
Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Brett Curran, who runs police operations in the north-west metropolitan region, said random knife attacks were “extraordinarily rare”. He said the majority of knife assaults and murders were committed between people who knew each other, in situations such as criminal associations or family violence.
Youth gangs are not a new phenomenon. Semi-organised violent groups of teenagers have existed in Melbourne for decades. But the way those groups form, organise, and eventually dissolve has changed.they were not organised like traditional crime groups, such as outlaw motorcycle clubs with rigid hierarchies, clubhouses, and gang colours or emblems.“While there are organised gangs, they can also be a bunch of kids who’ve just come together.
A number of recent, high-profile public incidents has been linked to gang activity, including a planned daylight brawl between two groups in a busy shopping centre, in which Victoria Police intervened before nine machetes, five knives and three other weapons could be used. Some of the weapons had been hidden in bushes or cars around the Watergardens shopping centre, where police alleged more than 14 people were planning to clash.
Youth engagement programs have had some success diverting teens away from gangs, with law enforcement figures showing 232 known members cut ties with the groups in the past year. However, those have been almost offset by 186 youths who were added to the police watch list in the same period. The 16-year-old, known to his friends as DJay, was bashed and stabbed several times in a “swarm” attack as he left a house party in Coburg North in March last year. Eight teenagers have been committed to stand trial., youths who identified as being part of a gang boasted about having “a link up” and “smoking” a victim — and warned rivals against starting “beef that you can’t finish”.
In other incidents, warring groups of teenagers have armed themselves with kitchen knives taken from a house party before a planned street fight turned fatal, while police have confiscated blades from children as young as 12.
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