A group of South Australian Police officers sent to aboriginal crime-ravaged Alice Springs as backup have been made go go through “cultural awareness” training before being deployed.
NT Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said he had made a request to SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens for assistance, in order to continue an increased presence in the Outback city which is now the 18th most dangerous in the world.
He said that would allow NT officers to be transitioned out of the central region and back to the Top End, particularly Katherine, where there is also an indigenous crime crisis.
The first of four groups of 10 officers will leave Adelaide on Monday and be temporarily sworn into the NT Police Force, with their deployment expected to end in February.
“Each South Australian officer will be partnered with an NT police officer, and be utilised for patrolling high risk locations, licensed premises and engaging with unaccompanied youth,” NT Police said in a statement.
“The officers have received full cultural awareness training, with South Australian Police having assisted Alice Springs in a similar capacity in April 2024.”
Commissioner Michael Murphy said: “I have made the decision to draw our members back to their various locations to ensure policing operations are continued throughout the Top End.”
Alice Springs has descended into chaos in recent weeks, with youth crime rates up more than 50% since 2020.
Last month two aboriginal teenagers were arrested and charged over the alleged bashing of a baby during a robbery, and a 22-year-old aboriginal man was charged over the alleged rape of a White Australian woman, during two separate home invasions.
The shocking alleged incidents prompted Labor member for Lingiari, Marion Scrymgour, to warn that non-indigenous women were being targeted in large numbers, with crime at levels residents have never seen before.
Ms Scrymgour, an indigenous woman who lives in the lawless Northern Territory town, told ABC News the situation was “anarchy” and that White women were being preyed on in “big numbers”.
“There are non-Indigenous women being targeted in Alice Springs,” she said.
“Something needs to be done urgently because [these are] women who should be safe in their own homes.
“We’ve got lawlessness at a level that we haven’t seen before.”
She spoke out after the horrific alleged attack on a female healthcare worker who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a man who climbed through a window into her bedroom and allegedly vaginally and orally raped her.
Police arrested the alleged offender, who was released on a good behaviour bond after being jailed for multiple offences in 2022, and he allegedly told officers he “had sex with a White woman”, The Australian reported.
Alice Springs has been plagued by years of lawlessness and aboriginal youth crime ever since the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act was ended in July 2022, allowing alcohol to become available again in many indigenous town camps.
Header image: Left, a riot in the centre of Alice Springs in March. Right, a man accused of raping a White Australian woman during a home invasion last month
