Editorial - Katherine Times
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Maybe there's not as many shop break-ins in Katherine as there was a year ago.
But tell that to the business owners who are still under siege.
After all it's a relative thing, police efforts are working, the numbers are falling.
But from a great height.
Year-on-year crime stats revealed "commercial break-ins" were rising an astonishing 200 per cent, it is still around the 70 per cent mark - almost one a day
That still smacks of "out of control" to us.
The worst in the Territory.
It is not a matter of how many there are - trying telling folk from Palmerston, Darwin and Alice Springs about Katherine's problems - but how bad they've become.
The Bendigo Bank branch was rolled twice in a week.
Once upon a time a bank robbery was a major event in a community like ours.
With so many other crimes happening, it just becomes part of the background noise.
It takes a person to speak up, like the fed-up owners of Rod and Rifle Tackle World last week, for the issue to command our attention again.
Police soon told us with their relocation of the portable CCTV trailer next to the Bendigo Bank that the town's late night defences - centred around regular police patrols and fixed security cameras along the main street - are basically a joke.
Regular patrols yes, and the small army of liquor inspectors about the place, police are trying.
Many people, including us, believe the police are doing a pretty good job.
Lots of thieves seem to be caught.
There's no hope of an identification or a successful prosecution from the recent images we have seen from the CCTV cameras, supposedly watched by trained staff 24-7 at police HQ in Darwin.
They need an upgrade, urgently.
And, as broke as the NT is, it shouldn't have to wait for the CBD upgrade, or wherever some bean counter would like to drag the money from, do it now.
Crowd fund if you have to.
As for the courts, it is very dangerous for the media to criticise them, especially when we don't really know what they are doing.
Parking the trailer in the main street is just embarrassing, and a clear signal to crooks of the many chinks in our supposed armour.
In the meantime our shopkeepers just brace for a phone call in the middle of the night.
This Editorial appeared in the current edition of the Katherine Times.