19 January 2012

Lake Ginninderra mugging. Good dog.

19 January 2012 | By johnboy

ACT Policing is appealing for witnesses to an aggravated robbery on a man as he walked around Lake Ginninderra last night (Wednesday, January 18).

About 9 pm the 26-year-old man was robbed by two men near Macdermott Place in Belconnen as he walked his dog around the lake.

The man was placed in a headlock from behind by one offender while the other man approached from the front and searched his pockets. A mobile phone, sunglasses and a packet of cigarettes were stolen.

The victim managed to break free after his dog bit one of the offenders.

The offender who searched the victim is described as being of African appearance, 6’5” (196cm) tall with dark skin and big teeth. He was wearing a red hooded jumper with a white Adidas logo on the chest and black cargo pants.

The second man is described as around 6’ (183cm) tall, wearing a black jumper and possibly of African appearance.

The offenders were last seen heading towards Coulter Drive.

Anyone who was in the area of Macdermott Place about 9 pm last night and may have seen the men matching these descriptions or anyone who may be able to assist with the investigation is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, or via www.act.crimestoppers.com.au. Information can be provided anonymously.

[Courtesy ACT Policing]

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The Dark11:35 am 21 Jan 12

Mental Health Worker – What the f*ck have you just said that i didn’t already say? Yes I know that alot of them that offend have difficulty adjusting to a society with law and order and whatever… But why does it still fall on Australia to take in people like this? Is it the ‘white guilt’ we’re all supposed to feel because ‘white society’ has succeeded more than theirs? Thats not our fault, we didn’t cause them the hardships they are fleeing, but our government HAS made the conscious decision to help these people, regardless of the outcome.

But oh no, if we deport them they could get harmed back in their own country… well thats why they came here in the first place, to escape that, not inflict it on the new country they take up residence in, maybe if they thought they would have to go back if they display violent tendencies or even that they get put in a program that helps them manage there ptsd or whatever there individual problems are, maybe that could curb the issue, but no, our prison system and lenient sentencing is a better way of dealing with it, even though they don’t seem to bothered by the thought of incarceration.

also, the africans hurting africans comment, i don’t wish for anyone to be hurting anyone, but if it comes down to innocent people being harmed by people that are only here out of the victim’s compassion, that’s where I would prefer to draw the line.

In the end the only people that benefit from this is people from a foreign land that don’t give a sh*t about us.

Wait till its yourself or your friends that have been jumped by a pack of bored Sudanese guys, or been stabbed over a cigarette, or surrounded by 6 of them so they can steal 1 $2 beer. You might not think i’m so unjustified.

Mental Health Worker9:41 am 21 Jan 12

Wow, what an outpouring of racist rubbish, with a few exceptions.

If we’re going to assume these offenders were of East African descent, there are a few things you need to consider:

many refugees arrive in Australian with problems – they were abused, and sometimes they were forced to abuse others, Africans in particular; to expect them to be model citizens is just silly, and it’s quite likely that the offending results from a combination of their pre-Australian experiences, with the easy access in Australia to alcohol, drugs and pokies; so Australian society has to take some of the blame for not providing adequate treatment for their trauama; ask anyone who works in the mental health sector whether they have been resourced, or even trained, to deal with the refugees and their problems, who the federal government dumps on their area, even fairly small regional cities and towns;

many refugees arrive as children; if they grow up to commit crime, it’s then arguable whether it is their experience of growing up in Australia that “made them criminals” rather than their being refugees; that experience could be just the normal Ozzie childhood, or more likely an Ozzie childhood affected by racism, discrimination, poverty, lack of extended family support, etc etc.

Incidentally, and I’m surprised no-one else picked it up, citizenship can be revoked. Permanent Residency is easier to revoke. Other visas easier still However, you’d have to wonder whether it would ever be right to send someone back to a country where their life was presumably in danger, otherwise they wouldn’t have received refugee status in the first place – you’re potentially imposing a death penalty. Is it a return to the transportation policies of 18th and 19th century England?

There’s also an element of racism or xenophobia to deporting offenders – yes they won’t offend in Australia again, but they will still be able to offend in the country they’re deported to. But presumably it’s OK with us if they offend against other Africans in Africa? There comes a point, be it years or decades after their arrival, when Australia “owns” the problem, and shouldn’t just be dumping the problem on some other, often poorer, country.

MHW

fgzk10:32 pm 20 Jan 12

I think some of you are showing your ignorance of who we are in Australia. Wave after wave of peoples have migrated to Australia escaping gunmen. Nothing changes. Not even the way some of you view the new arrivals. Its a bit sad.

OpenYourMind7:46 pm 20 Jan 12

matt31221 said :

It is only a matter of time before they are caught and dealt with. They have underestimated the Canberra population and the police force. They think they can get away with something like this? They will be proven wrong very soon.

They’ve apparently underestimated the sheer awesomeness of our dogs as well.

The Dark6:13 pm 20 Jan 12

Also, sorry for the 4th in a row, but Baldy if you keep up the research into Sudanese crime and look at the types of crimes being committed, not just the number of crimes

The Dark6:11 pm 20 Jan 12

Baldy – sorry, missed the bit about braddon, which im assuming is the murder of the poor asian bloke, that was committed by whites, but those whites weren’t brought here from another country and then just told to get out into society and deal with it, they grew up here and completely knew what they were doing.

The Dark6:07 pm 20 Jan 12

Baldy – I’m not blaming the race, I’m blaming a minority within that race, that minority has come here on the same grounds as the rest of the migrants for the same reasons, they just don’t seem as willing to try and work when the government gives them centrelink and housing, which is less incentive to get work, same as white bludgers, i know, but we already have enough of them, why bring in more from another country?

The Dark6:03 pm 20 Jan 12

Johnboy – Sure, that’s the same for me as well, but I’m sure that can be attributed to the fact that we live in a predominately white country, thus we have more encounters positive AND negative with white people simply because they’re are so many more of us. It just seems that from my personal experience, almost every young Sudanese person I’ve met between the ages of say 14 to 25, I’ve had negative experiences with, much more so than positive, in fact almost nil positive and this is through having contact with them through many different situations, school, buses, club/pub, chilling in a park, etc… Plus a quick google will show that this isn’t just me, crimes committed all over Australia in areas where Sudanese migrants have been moved into in large numbers are fairly severe compared to your run of the mill ‘white’ criminals.

Also, sorry, to be clear, I’m not talking about the whole community, I specified before the age group i was referring to, as it also seems pretty much the same every where that its the young male population that cause the trouble, whereas the majority that work are older, assuming thats because people would hire older migrants with perhaps more skills or more chance to travel further for work, such as to abattoirs in the middle of nowhere

Baldy5:57 pm 20 Jan 12

For the crime stats, the Australian Institute of Criminology has a breakdown of crime and ethnicity. It seems that young Sudanese have a marginally higher crime rate than the general populace (by 0.1% but far behind that of Lebanese and New Zealanders)

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rip/1-10/18.aspx

True. Infact they aren’t even meantioned in the summery. Seems Australian born crims are the worst.

[b]Ethnicity and offending[/b]
[i]One of the key questions that arises in the context of cultural diversity and crime is whether people from different ethnic groups are more likely or less likely to offend than the general Australian population. Although there are a number of limitations to the data on ethnicity and crime, including those as a result of recording practices by police and corrections agencies on ethnic background of offenders, the available evidence seems to suggest that overall, migrants have the lowest rates of criminality in Australia, followed by first generation Australians, with the remaining Australian-born population having the highest rates of criminality (Baur 2006). However, adult migrants from New Zealand, Lebanon, Vietnam, Turkey and Romania have been identified as having a higher involvement in criminal activity than the Australian-born population, while juveniles from Lebanese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Indo-Chinese and New Zealand backgrounds were more highly represented in the criminal justice system than their Australian-born counterparts (Baur 2006). As Baur (2006: 4) acknowledged, however,

it is misleading to suggest that being a member of one of these groups is causally related to criminal activity. It is necessary to reiterate that the statistics used to identify these groups are inadequate. Furthermore, it is important to recognise that socio-demographic factors and social disadvantage can better explain criminality than membership in the identified groups

At 30 June 2010, 20 percent of Australian prisoners (sentenced and unsentenced) were born overseas, although this rose to 25 percent in Victoria and New South Wales (which may be due to these jurisdictions having a higher immigrant population generally). While it is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the representation levels of different ethnic groups in the Australian prison population in detail, it is recognised that certain groups comprise significant proportions of the prison population. For example, at 30 June 2010, Vietnam was the most prevalent overseas birthplace for Victorian prisoners (5%; ABS 2010b). Accordingly, prison programs are clearly required to be sensitive to offenders’ cultural needs (eg Caraniche 2011).

Baldy5:43 pm 20 Jan 12

The Dark said :

This isn’t the only crime ever committed by Sudanese guys, maybe if it was, a mere mugging wouldn’t seem so bad. One example, remember the stabbing at Scullin flats not too long ago where the kid got ambushed and then almost stabbed to death, the main bloke that almost murdered him is Sudanese, with prior weapons/assault charges against him, .

Don’t really remember that one. I do remember a stabbing that happened in Braddon that was done by whites. Does taht count?

The Dark said :

Also, where do you think all the refugees are living if they cant get work? Because there’s either no jobs, they have no training and a lot of them have trouble with their English, thus their opportunities for work are limited, thus they stay on centrelink, thus government housing,

Presumably the same public housing that also house the non-working, dole bludging white, aborigonal, asian population as well.

My origonal point is that they were two people who broke the law and mugged someone. Their race had nothing to do with that. There are just as many bad people out their as tehse two taht aren’t of African decent. Blaming a race because of a few bad seeds is hardly appropriate.

LSWCHP10:07 pm 19 Jan 12

Darkfalz said :

LSWCHP said :

What I’m trying to get at (in a rather indirect way, I admit) is that these two clowns are just standard variety stupid small time criminal vermin scum. Their ethnic origin may be useful in identifying them, but it shouldn’t be used to characterise all the innocent people who may look like them.

Couple of things though. For a tiny percentage of the population, they’re getting very strong representation in these kinds of crimes these days (heck, Melbourne victim to the first US-style flash mobs). This can’t be ignored.

Of course, we have plenty of locally raised white scum. Nobody is disputing that. But it takes a special breed of lowlife to repay the incredible charity of being allowed to come here from their third world hole to our lovely country, where they probably live in a house paid for by the taxpayer, by preying on its citizens with the most pointless, vile crimes. This guy was walking his dog, it’s very unlikely he even had his wallet on him, so they assaulted him for a phone and a pair of sunglasses.

If they are caught, they should be deported. It should be a condition of entry for any refugee program that if you’re convicted of a felony you’re on the first plane back. I strongly suspect that it’s not though, it’ll just be a long chain of being in and out of the courts and taxpayer funded social work programs. We just don’t need to be importing filth and it makes me so livid at the former Stanhope government.

I haven’t seen any figures about the representation of refugees, African or otherwise, in criminal statistics, so I can’t comment there. If you’re correct then that is very sad, and would indicate that all the government filtering of refugees and asylum seekers is ineffective. I’d also like to see some links if you can find them.

I agree with your second point and some of your third point. Bad behaviour by someone you’ve invited into your home is very poor form, to put it mildly, and I’d be happy to uninvite the villains.

And again, there’s lots of good people out there who had a tough time getting here and are now doing great things. I work with professionals who came here as refugees from Somalia, Vietnam, Iran, South Africa and other places. They’re all good men. It’d be a bummer if they were tainted by the actions of some dicks.