Blaming Redfern

According to spokesperson for REDWatch, Geoff Turnbull, recent flaggings of Redfern in headlines of police reports were linking the area with crimes committed in the Redfern Local Area Command.

“The issue is that, where you have an area where there is this perception of crime, if you continually have Redfern being put out there as being a place associated with crime because of things that aren’t associated with it, well then you’ve got a problem which helps to fuel that perception,” he said.

Mr Turnbull said perceptions were based on offences that happened in the past, such as the Redfern riot which followed the death of 17 year-old Thomas Hickey in 2004.

He raised the possibility of changing the name of the Local Area Command (LAC) several years ago but there was reluctance among the police force.

In December last year, Mr Turnbull spoke to Redfern Local Area Commander, Superintendent Luke Freudenstein, about the police alerts.

“It looks like there has been a change in terms of the way police media flag stuff,” he said. “In the last two or three weeks we have now seen things that have been flagged as happening in Alexandria or Waterloo, or whatever, rather than Redfern.”

However, Mr Turnbull said he had yet to confirm this.

Manager of the New South Wales Police Media Unit, Timothy Archer, said typical police reports indicated the suburb in which a crime or incident occurred and also identified the Local Area Command which responded.

“Sometimes our headline may contain the name of the suburb or the name of the LAC in which the offence or incident occurs,” he said. “There is no policy which specifically dictates that we use one or the other in the headline.”

Mr Turnbull said the problem went beyond the headlines because once an area had a particular perception there was a difficulty in changing it. “Unless you become proactive and try to address some of those sorts of issues then things just linger on.”

Superintendent Luke Freudenstein said Redfern police were working very hard to remove the perception that it was an area of antisocial behaviour and crime. “We are being very successful in our reduction of crime and the fear of crime,” he said. “Robberies for the last three months have been the lowest they’ve been for a number of years.”

Photo: Ali Blogg - Redfern Police Station

Source: South Sydney Herald March 2009 www.southsydneyherald.com.au