By Sahar Foladi
In partnership between the City of Greater Dandenong Council and Victoria Police, CommSafe forum was held on 22 March to provide an informative session to the community.
A wide range of members from the Victoria Police were present to speak on panels about issues such as, family violence, drug, police road patrolling, crime trends, crime prevention and much more.
Panel members also answered questions from the audience.
Amongst the influential individuals were Keysborough Secondary College students from Year 11 and 12 seated at the back of the room.
Sophia is interested in a career in criminology and social work.
“I think we learnt a lot about the impact the Police have on the community.
“We learnt that they’re not just law enforcement they’re trying to listen to us but we do have a lot of improvements that we would like to talk to them about.”
El and Palak both on the School Council represent the student body and they both lean towards studying Law after graduation.
“In our school student voice is a big deal with the school Council. We can bring issues on the forefront and talk about programs like Bluedge and how youth are affected,” Palak said.
The enthusiastic students learned about some of the programs available to young people and are passionate to bring those programs to their schools as well.
“A lot of the programs aren’t heavily advertised so we learnt a lot about programs that we didn’t know of before like Bluedge and living free program,” El said.
All of the students walked out with different perspectives on Victoria Police from when they first entered the room.
“We always saw them as figures to be scared of but today we saw them more as helpers and people that we can approach with our concerns,” Sophia said.
The young students were passionate about issues such as drugs, aggressive behaviours within and around school grounds, bullying, peer pressure and broadly looking at the youth in justice systems.
The forum is one of the two in the state according to the mayor Eden Foster.
“Victoria Police supports us all to implement the Greater Dandenong Community Safety Plan 2015-22 and is an essential stakeholder to helping us improve perceptions and levels of community safety throughout our municipality.
“A partnership approach is the key to helping us achieve the strategic outcomes of our Community Safety Plan.”
Council will continue to work with key stakeholders to improve ongoing issues in the municipality.
Along with Victoria Police chief commissioner Shane Patton, Greater Dandenong mayor Eden Foster, CEO Jacqui Weatherill, councillors, community organisation leaders and local members also attended the forum.
Colin Huth a local member of the Dandenong Police Station has served the community for 30 years now and has also been awarded the Greater Dandenong Council’s Living Treasure award this year.
“Today was very successful we were able to demonstrate that we have a lot of work going on that’s clearly connected to the council.
“I feel we have done a very good job to present where we’re at but by no means that we’re finished there’s lot of work to do.”
Mr Huth said he’s very happy everyone came down to the forum and recognises it to be a very important encounter between Victoria Police and the community.
“There are always operations running that are there to keep issues that were identified, in check. At the moment we will continue with our neighbourhood police patrols to make sure we’re on the street using tools like CCTV to keep an eye on how things are tracking.”
