MEAN STREETS OF ROSEVILLE LEAVE CABRAMATTA FOR DEAD

It may come as a shock to the residents of Roseville but the Police
Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, believes the quiet and leafy North Shore
suburb is more dangerous than Cabramatta.

Mr Ryan should know. He lives there. But does he know? The latest
police crime index rates the North Shore Local Area Command, which
takes in his home, 38th on a list of offences such as assault,
break-and-enter, robbery, stealing and motor vehicle theft.

Cabramatta comes in 51st.

A lot of people think Mr Ryan is deluded, especially those who live
and work in Cabramatta. Crime experts and academics dismiss the police
crime index as too selective to be taken seriously.

In fact, the 1999 crime index shows Sydney's higher-priced suburbs are
far less law-abiding than Cabramatta. Leichhardt, the eastern beaches,
the northern beaches, Miranda, Ku-ring-gai and Manly all rate as more
crime-ridden than Cabramatta.

Mr Ryan uses the crime index to reject claims that there is a crime
wave in Cabramatta.

Yet fanned by crime statistics and sometimes blanket media coverage,
Cabramatta, with two suspected murders and more than 40 shootings this
year, has become, rightly or wrongly, synonymous with drugs, ethnic
violence, murder and mayhem.

So why the gap between police statistics and popular
perception?

The director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Dr
Don Weatherburn, says the problem is that the police crime index does
not include statistics on drug crime.

Rather, the index, introduced after Mr Ryan became commissioner, is a
measure of often less serious offences.

As such, Dr Weatherburn says, it is a valuable but limited
guide.

"In NSW, we do not have the foggiest idea of what is the driving
engine behind most crime, drug crime. Somebody who wants a fix [of
heroin] will commit the crime in say, the North Shore, a place where
there is wealth and where break-and-enters are rife, and catch the
train out to Cabramatta to score.

"The crime was committed on the North Shore but the reason for the
crime was in Cabramatta. And the biggest problem in NSW is that we do
not know the number of illegal drug transactions that are taking place."

The crime index is gathered monthly by police to help assess the
performance of each local area command in NSW and help senior officers
determine what level of resources should be directed to particular
regions.

However, the Opposition's police spokesman, Mr Andrew Tink, says it is
a PR stunt used by police management to convince themselves that their
own benchmarking is working.

"But can they seriously suggest that the North Shore is a less
crime-prone area than Cabramatta?" Mr Tink said. "To learn the real
truth, you only have to ask the people who live there. They know where
the drugs and the murders are."

The Heraldobtained the police crime index under Freedom of
Information. Of the 80 command areas surveyed, the 11 most law-abiding
areas were Mudgee, Cootamundra, Lachlan, Darling River, Hunter Valley,
Barrier, Castlereagh, Goulburn, Deniliquin, Griffith and Hawkesbury.

In Sydney, The Hills (68th) and Gladesville (63rd) had the lowest
incidence of the crimes.

Mr Ryan was not available for comment but a Police Service spokesman
said the crime index was an internal document that did nothing more
than benchmark the performance of individual commands in crime
categories common across all areas of the State.

"The index has no bearing on numbers of police assigned to a command
or the resources allocated to it. Commands are allocated additional
staffing and resources to deal with specific crime problems ... For
example, more than 40 additional police are working with those from
Cabramatta on strike forces targeting drugs and organised crime."