Home invasions, carjackings, muggings, assaults, stabbings… We’ve had these kinds of crimes before. But what we haven’t seen before, at least not to this degree, is the way these criminals get to walk free time and again to commit ever more violent crimes. What we’re seeing today is an unprecedented failure of the justice system to uphold justice.

This story in the Australian is all too common in today’s Australia.

On a cold night back in July, Richa Walia was sleeping the kind of sleep she can now only dream about when her peaceful slumber was shattered by the glass door at the back of the family home exploding. It was just after 5am.

Four Apex gang thugs had hurled a rock through the door and charged into the house.

By the time the 26-year-old university student fully woke, the teenage attackers, armed with baseball bats and metal poles, were threatening her parents and ­demanding car keys.

“I went downstairs and saw one of the guys in my sister’s room. He was looking at me and wasn’t scared at all,” she recalls.

“I said: ‘Who are you?’ And he just put a phone he had taken in his pocket.”

Richa’s brother was hiding in his room terrified as the rest of the thugs were screaming at her parents, Ashani and Rekha, for the car keys.

Eventually they found the keys to both family cars and sped off to commit further crimes.

For the Walia family, the acute terror ended there. But the incident continues to haunt them.

“No one sleeps at all — we have all been sick. It is the fact that the quality of life has been disturbed and the fact that law supports criminals more than us makes it so difficult,” the media and communications student tells The Australian.

The family feels the police ­response should have been quicker than 30 minutes [emphasis added], and has watched as two of the four attackers were bailed.

This story, sadly, is no longer unusual. Caroline Springs, the suburb on Melbourne’s western fringes where this hardworking Indian Australian family lives, is now dubbed Criminal Springs by its rueful residents. Back in 2000 the development was marketed by tennis great John Newcombe in TV advertisements as a place where “the kids can have a lifestyle and we can let them go around the corner without being afraid”. Now, residents hold their own neighbourhood watch patrols in an ­effort to keep safe.

Similar patrols have sprung up in parts of Geelong and the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne around Dandenong, the epicentre of the Apex gang, which is named after a local street.

I was once considered crazy for advocating that Australians should be permitted by law to keep and carry the means of their own protection, including firearms. Responses ranged from ‘guns are bad’ to ‘there’ll be shootouts over car parking spaces’ to ‘you’re just going to make it worse’, and a host of other fear-based reactions.

It’s been interesting over the last year or so as the attitudes of a number of my friends has softened or shifted significantly, as the failure of the state to prevent crime, or to deal with criminals, has become plain for all to see. The imaginary fear of what law-abiding people might do with guns is being overcome by a very real fear of what the lawless are already doing with baseball bats, knives, and yes, guns.

Read again the article above… it took the police 30 minutes to arrive! There were 4 attackers, and they came armed! The bottom line here is that the criminals had complete and total control of the situation, and whatever they wanted, they were going to get. Car keys? Done. Phones? Just pick them up and put them in their pocket. Jewelry? Cash? Just threaten and terrorize the family until they give up their valuables.

And if they get caught, chances are all they’ll ‘suffer’ is a suspended sentence, or a posting of bail, to be back on the street within days and be free to offend again.

I’ll say it again, we’ve seen these sorts of crimes before, but never before has the ‘justice system’ so badly and repeatedly betrayed the law abiding people of Victoria, and left them at the mercy of the lawless and violent.

And I’m not talking about one-off or isolated incidents. The ‘justice system’ is failing systematically and repeatedly. And because precedent is a key part of a judge’s sentencing decisions, the more it fails us now, the more it will continue to fail us in the future.

Repeat violent offenders are being re-bailed despite having committed new violent crimes whilst on bail for previous violent crimes…

And thanks to Daniel Andrews, there’s now no consequences for under 18s breaching the conditions of their bail… it’s literally just a meaningless bit of paper.

Under legislation that comes into force today, the Victorian Andrews government has removed penalties for under 18s who breach bail conditions.

Victorian Police Association secretary, Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles, said the changes meant youths on bail could breach curfews without punishment.

“It means absolutely nothing because they can breach that, stay out all night and there is no action that police can take,” he told Radio 3AW.

So lets take stock…

1. Australians are not legally allowed to prepare themselves for their own self defense with any sort of weapons at all, not even inside their own home.
2. The attackers come in packs, take their victims by surprise, and are usually armed with deadly weapons.
3. Police cannot respond fast enough to stop a crime in progress, or to save lives, stop rapes, or do anything other than take photographs after the fact and make empty promises about how they’ll ‘find those responsible’.
4. If those criminals are actually found and caught they’ll be bailed within 12-48 hours and be back on the streets with zero consequences for their actions.

But our government expects us to ‘obey the law’ and our police warn us against ‘taking matters into our own hands’

Assistant Commissioner Leane said residents could never be sure what an offender was capable of doing.

Exactly, Assistant Commissioner Leane… you don’t know what those people are capable of doing. And with that in mind, go back to the story at the start of this post. Four young, fit, violent, heavily armed men break into your home. You have a wife and a daughter (maybe in your case you are the wife or daughter… or maybe there’s no man in the house at all, it’s just the wife and daughter… what ideas might these violent thugs get into their demented brains in that situation?) and you don’t know what these people are capable of doing. How is that statement a comfort? What am I supposed to think when I hear the police telling me that I don’t know what these violent, armed criminals in my home are capable of. And because I’m disarmed, they have all the power.

Maybe they want my car. Maybe my money. Maybe this is just about my replaceable possessions and if I give them what they want then we’ll all be fine.

But maybe they want my wife. Maybe they want my daughter. Maybe they’re going to do unspeakable things to my family and then they’re not going to leave any witnesses alive…

I DON’T KNOW. YOU don’t know. And even the police admit you can’t know.

But the solution as the police would see it is to submit, give them what they want, and hope. Hope that maybe all they want is your car, your keys, your phone. Submit to the violent and lawless, and place your life at their ‘mercy’.

Does that sound like a solution to you? Does that sound like a peaceful country that enjoys the ‘rule of law’? Does that sound like our ‘law enforcement’ and ‘justice system’ are working?

Sure doesn’t sound like it to me. The Law has made me and my family defenceless, and given the violent among us licence to kill. And make no mistake it’s only a matter of time before killing and raping are added to the fast-growing rap sheet of these underage thugs. So far it’s been ‘only’ bashing, robbing, crashing, and stabbing…

Law and Order is the number 1 political issue in the state of Victoria, although the political parties here have yet to catch up with that reality. The next state election will be won by the political party which can be trusted most to transform the justice system into… (shock horror) a system that dispenses justice, and can make appropriate changes to law so that law abiding people can protect themselves and their families without fear of spending more time in prison than the violent thugs they were protecting themselves from.

In the mean time, just hope it doesn’t happen to you. According to the police, ‘hope’ is all you’ve got, because you’re not allowed to defend yourself and they won’t be there for you when you need them. And if you use a weapon to defend yourself, your family, or your home, then the police will be arresting you when they do finally arrive. Good luck with the ‘justice system’ then!

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