Canberra, Feb 5
Police in South Australia (SA) have established a new task force to combat violent crimes committed by youth gangs.
SA Police announced the new Youth and Street Gangs Task Force on Wednesday as part of a boost to police resources allocated to investigating youth crime, domestic and family violence, cybercrime and retail theft.
Commissioner Grant Stevens said that the new task force would respond to crimes as well as undertake preventive and rehabilitative work.
"Youth crime is not just about the criminality, but the recruitment of younger members, so the task force provides an opportunity to break this cycle," he said in a statement.
"This permanent task force will disrupt and reduce the criminal activities of a target group of offenders, particularly focusing on crimes of violence that pose a significant risk to community safety."
The task force has been formed by merging two existing police operations and adding 13 police officers to its ranks.
SA Police data released earlier in January revealed that the number of crimes committed by offenders aged 10-17 rose by 140 per cent from 6,938 in 2018-19 to 16,710 in 2023-24.
Responding to the data at the time, Acting Assistant Commissioner John De Candia said that police were observing high rates of re-offending within youth crime.
He said that 10 per cent of youth offenders accounted for about 50 per cent of the crimes committed, Xinhua news agency reported.
The task force is part of an initiative redirecting more than 70 police officers to frontline areas.
An additional nine police officers will be assigned to investigate financial and cybercrime under the shake-up while an additional 13 will join family and domestic violence investigations.
On Wednesday, a man was hospitalised after being stabbed on a busy street in inner suburbs of Melbourne.
Police in the state of Victoria said the man in his 30s was stabbed near a busy intersection on a major road in Prahran, about four km southeast of central Melbourne, shortly before 8 am local time, Australia's 9News network reported.
He was taken to a nearby hospital in a serious condition with non-life-threatening injuries to his lower body.
Authorities have commenced a search of the local area for an unknown male attacker.
- IANS