Senior police and civic security leaders barely batted an eye as Willagee and Kardinya residents spoke of their lived experiences and the frightening rise of petty crime during a packed public crime forum.
More than 100 people sat in Monday night’s crowd and scoffed as Acting Inspector Greg Cunningham — who oversees Cockburn, Murdoch and Palmyra police stations — said his police were working hard despite limited resources.
“Burglary has gone down 21.2 per cent, stealing from retail stores has gone down 21.5 per cent, which is surprising given the cost of living crisis,” Act. Insp. Cunningham said before being interrupted by a disgruntled audience member, who said: “I don’t think there is a single person in this room that believes that petty crime has gone down.
“By carrying on with your statistics you’re not giving us the validation we need given what we are experiencing every day.”
City of Melville head of community security services Mike Emery reinforced Act. Insp. Cunningham’s message.
“From a data point of view, in March 2025 CSS had 36 calls from Willagee, in March 2024 we had 30 calls, we are not seeing massive increases,” he said.
Palmyra police station officer-in-charge Katie Minor blamed community complacency for what attendees declared were “inaccurate statistics”.
“We can’t make a change if you don’t report (crime activities),” she said.
“It’s called the bystander effect. You think ‘oh someone else will report it’ and then no one does.
“We think the solution to these problems are not a police-related issue, it is a joint effort among all of us.”
Audience members responded that police need to “take accountability” for the lack of safety locals are feeling.
“It’s just not good enough, there have been known drug houses operating for 20 years and you have done nothing, maybe if you looked at the big picture and shut them down there wouldn’t be so much crime every day,” one claimed.
A pre-forum survey revealed 83.3 per cent of attendees were mostly worried about break-ins and anti-social behaviour.
State Opposition police spokesperson Adam Hort, who was at the forum, said people demanding more police or safer streets needed to ask themselves why they had not voted for change at either the State or Federal elections.
“Safety is something your local member should really be fighting for, if you weren’t happy you should have voted for change,” Mr Hort said.
“Maybe at the next election you won’t make the same mistake.”
The forum was initiated by Whitehaven Clinic Addiction Treatment and Recovery Centre founder Tabitha Corser, who hopes to deliver others in the future on other topics of community importance.
