HIGHWAY ROBBERY ON MELBOURE STREETS

Last week, a young man and woman, desperate to feed a drug habit, were
responsible for at least five armed hold-ups of service stations
across Melbourne.

Their attacks took them from Springvale to Rowville, to Chadstone,
Berwick and Frankston, as they threatened attendants with an
assortment of garden stakes, kitchen knives and in one case a plank of
wood with nails in it.

Police expect them to strike again soon.

Also last week, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released 1999
recorded crime statistics that revealed Victoria has a crime rate
almost 20 per cent below the national average, enabling police and the
government to trumpet the news that Victoria is the safest place to
live in the country.

But the statistics also revealed an alarming new trend: armed robbery
in Victoria rose by 19.6 per cent on the previous year, and incidences
of offences involving weapons other than firearms - knives, syringes,
bits of wood - rose by 15.4 per cent.

Therese Ryan, 25, of Armadale, has first-hand experience of this
latest crime trend, having been the target of such an attack.

In February last year, Ms Ryan was alone in her small gift shop in
Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, when a man entered and picked up an item he
brought to the counter under the guise of buying it.

"He handed over money and when I opened the till he leapt over the
counter, went for the till," Ms Ryan told The Sunday Age last week.
"Stupidly, I grabbed it and pulled it away from him and we ended up
struggling, with him hitting me and throwing me across the counter."

The man escaped to a waiting stolen car with $150 and some large
scratches across his face, courtesy of Ms Ryan's fingernails.

"It was an instinctive reaction (to fight). He came over into my
space, and he was going for my money and it was just instinctive to
try and beat the hell out of him," she said.

The man, a heroin addict, was caught by police the next day. They
later told Ms Ryan that he was responsible for up to 50 such hold-ups,
often brandishing a blood-filled syringe, on florist shops and small
businesses across Melbourne.

Cold comfort considering that for months later the hair on the back of
her neck would rise every time she was alone in the shop and a
"dubious-looking" man walked in.

"I was a nervous wreck, I was in tears on everybody's shoulders for a
good couple of days," Ms Ryan said. "The police said he would have
walked up and down the street, checked out every shop and seen me
being all alone, a young girl and not exactly large, he would have
thought 'OK, I'll get her', and that made me really angry."

Detective Inspector Ray McLeod-Dryden, head of the Embona Taskforce,
established in response to the increase in robberies on so-called
"soft-targets", says about 70 per cent of these types of robberies are
drug-related and it is a trend reflected in cities around the world.

The taskforce comprises about 30 detectives working in five teams in
areas that traditionally have high robbery rates, such as Glen
Waverley, or in areas closely linked to local drug markets, such as
Springvale.

The taskforce has enabled detectives to coordinate their information
and identify trends in the behavior of offenders.

In the past two years taskforce detectives have charged 1177 people
with more than 2000 offences, a figure that includes 848 people
charged with 1361 robberies.

Inspector McLeod-Dryden says often offenders are recidivist -
habitually reoffending to support drug habits.

"We do get frustrated when we see the same crooks habitually
committing armed robberies," Inspector McLeod-Dryden said last week.
"Robbery is a major crime and carries substantial penalties, but there
is a perception that it has been devalued because it is so prevalent."

Police Minister Andre Haermeyer has said the rise in armed robbery
reflected the need for the additional 800 police members promised by
the State Government.

Inspector McLeod-Dryden said he expected a push for more detectives to
be attached to Embona due to a recent restructuring of the force. But
more police alone will not solve the problem.

"If the trends are showing that offenders are getting younger then we
need to get into the schools and start educating them," he said.

"More police on the streets," says Ms Ryan. "If there had been police
around that day he wouldn't have hit me, but then he would have gone
somewhere else, so in a way it's a bit of both.

"They also need to attack the actual drug situation."