Damn the lies and statistics

by Malcolm Knox (SMH 16/6/00)

Ross Treyvaud, the president of the Cabramatta Chamber of Commerce, was on his way to Canberra "to see if we can get people at Federal level to hear what the State people don't want to hear".

Mr Treyvaud was talking about the head-in-the-sand approach that is revealed by Commissioner Ryan's positive spin on Cabramatta crime statistics.

"Blind Freddy can tell you that a lot of street crime in Cabramatta isn't addressed or reported," he said.

Perhaps he should have referred to Blind Peter. For the commissioner to rely on statistics that place his home area, the North Shore, as more crime-ridden than Cabramatta is to betray an almost willful denial of the real facts.

Paramount among those facts, as Mr Treyvaud pointed out, is that "if you counted murder and drug crime in those statistics, we'd come out at number one".

By restricting the comparison to the five common small crimes - assault, break and enter, robbery, stealing and motor vehicle theft - the police commissioner conveniently overlooked the fact that the Cabramatta area has long led the State in narcotics-related crime.

Fairfield's only ethnic Vietnamese councillor, Thang Ngo, puts the lack of reporting of crime down to customer service issues with the police.

"There's a real lack of confidence in the police here because their response to reported crime is so poor," Mr Ngo said. "As a result, people don't bother reporting it."

"On top of that, there is no Vietnamese-speaking police officer in Cabramatta, which compounds the language barrier. And many businesses that are broken into are uninsured, so they see no need to report it."

Last month Cr Ngo drew public attention to Avonleigh Street in Cabramatta, where locals reported 85 recent break-ins. The police countered that there had only been nine.

"I can't believe people were exaggerating that much," said Mr Ngo. "Even if they were exaggerating by a factor of two, that still meant 40 break-ins, which is several times higher than the police reported."

The Chamber of Commerce has started a Cabramatta Against Crime program in the past two months. "Were trying to educate people that it's always better to report a crime," Mr Treyvaud said.

But he felt there was an agenda - expressed through the police and the State Government - to "desensitise the area as a place of criminal activity, and play up the positive message".

"That's all very well, but it's only happening because crime in Cabramatta has become such an embarrassment to them."

Mr Treyvaud is pessimistic about the near future. He has written to Mr Ryan and his deputy, Jeff Jarratt, "but I'm getting the response that nothing can be done until after the Olympics".

"If local police numbers are going down by 35 per cent, as has been reported, around the time of the Olympics, then we're really worried about a blow-up in crime here.

"It doesn't seem as if anything will be done until afterwards. In the meantime, people are dying on our streets."

Cr Ngo, who represents the Unity Party, has emerged as a bête noire of police. Two weeks ago, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to draw police attention to a drug-dealing site at a Cabramatta service station, he took a Channel 9 crew there to film the activity.

"A day later, there were miraculously six arrests," he said. "The police don't like me doing this, but you get so frustrated with the lack of response that there's no other way."