Hume residents are most concerned about hoon driving, safety at night and burglaries and thefts, the results of a new survey reveal.
The police survey was completed by 362 Hume residents in May and June, providing police with a snapshot of the community’s safety concerns.
Releasing the survey results last week, Hume Inspector Dean Clinton said road safety, particularly hoon driving, speeding, burnouts and screeching tyres, was the top concern.
Rounding out the top three in Hume was safety in public spaces – particularly public transport and parks at night – with residents citing concerns about youth offending, theft, robbery and street violence, and safety of property and possessions in relation to home burglary, theft and car break-ins.
Inspector Clinton said the top three areas of concerns were no surprise to police.
He said Hume police actively targeted hoon drivers through Operation Northern Lights, as well as running targeted operations on individuals known to be involved in intentional high risk driving.
Inspector Clinton said Hume police would continue to work with transit police, protective services officers and shopping centre security guards to address the other concerns.
“Our neighbourhood policing team have run Operation Visible, Operation Trust and Operation Anvil at various time of the day and night. These operations provide a mix of highly visible and covert responses, to prevent, disrupt and respond to the concerns around safety in public and burglary,” he said,
“We also conduct [person of interest] based tasking each week, where we manage high risk offenders, to hold them to account. We have weekly patrols at our shopping centres and daily patrols and PSOs at our transport hubs.
“In September we will be running Operation Leverage / OMNI to address concerns around the Broadmeadows hub.”
The survey also revealed that the overall feeling of safety in Hume had risen since 2022, with the municipality scoring 3.1 out of a 5, up from 2.9.
” I believe the rise in feeling of safety comes from police being visible and accessible, we are doing a significant amount of community engagement through neighbourhood policing,” Inspector Clinton said.
“I also believe our open and honest approach, and regular updates to community on what we are doing and how we’re going, helps build trust, confidence and feelings of safety.
“We have an annual plan and a community issue register that is dedicated to solving community problems and concerns, and we will keep tackling these issues to ensure community feel safe in the Hume area.”
Inspector Clinton said that in the next 12 months, Hume police would work to improve responses to mental health emergencies, strengthen its work with the community around family violence, drugs, mental health and young people. and continue to tackle youth gangs, possession of weapons and knife-related crime.
