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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-11-29 Daily Xml
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POLICE LOCAL SERVICE AREAS

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (17:19): I have pleasure to rise on the adjournment debate prior to the valedictories because there is an issue of significant importance to the electors in Morialta, so I just want to take up a couple of minutes of the time of the house to share and, hopefully, to encourage the government to action.

It was at the end of last year that I wrote to the Minister for Police seeking assistance in relation to the police zones that cover the areas of Woodford and Teringie in the Morialta electorate. The police zones for those suburbs are in the Hills Fleurieu Local Service Area which has often led to extended waiting times for quite urgent issues to be dealt with. It took some time to get a response and, in fact, the Minister for Transport was the acting police minister who wrote a letter to me when the minister was away, confirming that the government would not be changing those zones. I brought a petition to the house and moved a motion in the house, on 3 May, which read:

That this house calls upon the police minister to request that the SAPOL local service area for the suburbs of Woodforde and Teringie be adjusted from the Hills Fleurieu Local Service Area to either the Eastern Adelaide or Holden Hill local services areas.

These suburbs of Adelaide deserve to be serviced as suburbs of Adelaide by police who would hopefully respond within the 10 minutes that it would take to get to those areas from the Norwood Police Station or the Holden Hill Police Station, as opposed to the hour and 10 minutes that a number of my constituents had to suffer while they had intruders trying to get into their house or circling their house and causing them great pain.

I will not go into all the arguments, as members can read Hansard and I am sure they have perfect knowledge of the same, but I will just quote one argument which I think was the nub of the minister's point at the time—and I am not trying to be political, I am trying to fairly represent her views—when she said:

I have also previously advised the member for Morialta that when a person calls 131 444 or 000, the state duty manager and the state shift controller have the authority to ask a patrol from an adjoining area to respond to a request for assistance. Boundaries of an LSA are not the Berlin Wall nor the Great Wall of China. A police vehicle may cross that boundary as easily as Mr Gardner himself.

I can inform members of the house that on occasions I have had street corner meetings. Earlier this year the member for Morphett and I had street corner meetings attended by 30 or 40 residents of Woodforde, and about 20 people at Teringie came out to talk about this issue. Some of them had had excellent experiences and not one of them had a bad word to say about the police officers who attended, but most of them had either experienced or heard of an experience of somebody who had had an hour and 45 minutes or an hour and a half for an important and urgent police attendance. I would like to share briefly with the house one recent experience of a Woodforde resident. She had written to her neighbours and this letter was shared with my office last week. The letter states:

On Saturday night, 4 August 2012, just after midnight, I was in bed, my 4 year old boy was in his room asleep (my 6 year old daughter was having a sleep over at a friend's house) and my husband fell asleep in the lounge room watching the Olympics. I woke up at 12.10am to a lady standing over my bed. I screamed and she started to run down our passage way.

She was wearing dark pink flannelette PJ with white star shapes on them, half her buttons undone and a black camisole top on, probably about 170cm tall and mid built, probably in her early 40s dark hair in a pick tale and very very disoriented.

She did not try and harm me and I asked her what she was doing. She said 'I am a mother too' which obviously means she had been in my son's room.

I called the police straight away and they arrived at the house 45 minutes later. They apologised but apparently our area here at Woodforde is zoned from the Mt Barker Police Station and not the Norwood Police Station which is 24 hours and much closer. Luckily she was not trying to harm us but imagine if you had an intruder with a weapon and you had to wait until the police could arrive from Mt Barker.

On investigation she had been in my car in our drive way which I accidentally left unlocked and the keys in it (obviously rushing with the kids and forgot to lock it). She must have sat in my car and smoked as she had pulled my car apart and there was ash all in my car. She also then proceeded to take the keys and lock my car and luckily we found my keys on the roadside the next morning.

This lady pulled 2 of our fly screens off windows trying to get into our house and then got into one of our backdoors that we had yet to lock—as my husband locks up before he goes to bed. She walked through the back door (with all the kitchen lights on and the tv going so was not concerned that we were inside) and she walked past expensive items such as laptops, ipad, my handbag with purse, camera etc and must have been sitting on my son's bed and she pushed all his toys of the end of the bed to sit down. My son did not know of her being in there.

We had the crime scene investigators come to our house on Sunday afternoon to finger print the house/car. The police asked that I bring this to all the neighbours attention in case you may know who this person is...and to ensure that even if you are home things like this can happen.

She then goes on to ask her neighbours to share any information that they may have. This is a real and present concern for electors in Woodforde and Teringie; despite the fact that they are in metropolitan Adelaide and are treated as if they are in metropolitan Adelaide in many ways, they are zoned within the Hills Fleurieu Local Service Area.

The Minister for Police has written to me again recently confirming that, although there is a new Commissioner of Police, his views on the matter are the same. I hope that the Minister for Police and the Commissioner of Police will consider this matter again. It is of urgent interest and concern to electors in Woodforde and Teringie, and I will continue to raise this issue in this house until some resolution of the matter is reached.

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