By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
A 60 PER CENT increase in the total number of criminal offences recorded in Clyde has reignited calls for a police station in the suburb.
According to the latest Crime Statistics Agency report released last Thursday, the total number of reported offences has risen from 273 in 2013-’14, to 447 a year later.
That represents a 63.7 per cent rise.
This week Clyde Village Store owner Tracey O’Brien said a police station in the suburb was “necessary” due to the continuing population boom, underlined by an ever-burgeoning number of housing estates.
“As it stands at the moment, with all the new estates and growing population, resources haven’t grown with it,” Ms O’Brien, who has lived in Clyde for the last three years, said.
“We’re paying the same rates as those in Cranbourne and we don’t have all the resources they have, and that includes police resources.”
Her comments come after Casey Councillor Amanda Stapledon in March pushed for council to write to Police Minister Wade Noon and Shadow Minister Edward O’Donohue to investigate the viability of setting up a police station in Clyde.
Meanwhile during a Police Association rally in Berwick last year, Secretary Ron Iddles called for an additional 155 first-response officers for Casey over the next five years, as well as a new 24-hour police station in Casey to cater for the municipality’s population growth.
Shadow Police Minister Edward O’Donohue said the latest statistics for Clyde reinforced the issue.
“What was in effect a quiet country town is being rapidly transformed into part of urban Melbourne and in the past few years has thousands of people moving in,” he said.
When he spoke to the News last week Mr O’Donohue questioned whether additional police would be funded for in Melbourne’s south-east under the new government, noting the recent State Budget had only committed to additional police in Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula, outside its proposed custody officer program.
This week Mr O’Donohue cited the latest crime statistics, which also indicated a rise in recorded offences of 25.4 per cent for Berwick, 14.7 per cent for Narre Warren, 24 per cent for Narre Warren North and 18.2 per cent for Cranbourne.
The government did not respond to new questions from the News this week in relation to the latest statistics and the recent recorded offences rise in Clyde.
But on the topic of a police station in Clyde, Police Minister Wade Noonan said in May that the government would work closely with police when investigating the potential need for a new facility.
He said the government wouldn’t “impose” stations on police that “may not be required.”
