The marketing manager who provides strategic advice on the “Territory master brand”, installed by the government to control the NT Police media unit, has been working with police in Alice Springs at a time when the now-Lawler Government hopes to avoid national media attention about crime.
Two boys aged 13 and 14 were arrested, while three boys between 11 and 13 were taken home, after allegedly stealing a car and doing burnouts on an Alice Springs city street, NT Police said.
Alice Springs staff members of the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education were flown to Darwin and put up in hotel rooms for two nights at the public’s expense for its Christmas party, sources have told the NT Independent.
Territory Families Minister Ngaree Ah Kit has admitted the child protection team is short-staffed by close to a third, but maintained they can provide 24-hour weekend staffing in Alice Springs while not able to say how many staff were rostered on each shift, which a local MLA has said would make it impossible for the government to deliver what they pledged.
Offenders who commit crimes in Darwin and other urban centres can choose to be sentenced in their home remote community, as part of a new “community court sentencing” program implemented by the Fyles Government earlier this month, that sources say will silence victims, cut prosecutors out of the sentencing process and reduce the public’s awareness of how offenders are dealt with by the courts.
Police have suppressed the sexual assault of a seven-year-old child in Tennant Creek and refused to say if the offender has been arrested, breaching their own transparency guidelines, an independent MLA has said.
Australia’s newest low-cost airline Bonza has launched its Melbourne – Alice Springs route, with its maiden flight due to touchdown in Alice Springs later today.
Child protection workers will be rostered on overnight in Alice Springs on weekdays and 24-hours on Friday to Sunday in a trial lasting less than two months, the Fyles Government has announced, breaking the promise of Police Minister Brent Potter who when spruiking the government’s so-called ‘summer crime reduction plan’ said they would be on the streets 24-hours-a-day with no mention of it being a trial.
Three teenagers were arrested and two “people” are still on the run after police stopped their stolen car using tyre spikes, NT Police said, while two teens and a 12-year-old were arrested and returned to “responsible adults” after also being stopped in a stolen car after two sets of tyre spikes were deployed.
There are three less police officers in Alice Springs now than in late January when the Prime Minister announced there would be 30 more police, NT Police Association president Nathan Finn said, accusing the government of misleading the public and saying there are not enough police to fill regular shifts, let alone provide the 50 “extra” officers daily that were promised recently.
NT Police have warned the public not to approach a man they believe breached his bail, but failed to tell the public he had previously served time for killing a man in a remote community.
Territory Families Minister Ngaree Ah Kit says she will be “looking very closely” at having youth workers on the streets of Alice Springs 24-hours-a-day, something the Police Minister said two weeks ago would definitely happen.
