Alice Springs businessman claims he was broken into 41 times during city’s youth crime wave

An Alice Springs businessman has explained how he was mugged 41 times during the terrifying wave of ongoing crime in the inland capital, but says a shocking escalation in violence means the city is now “totally out of control”.

Darren Clark, a former bakery and coffee shop owner, has endured wave after wave of attacks against the three businesses he has run in Alice Springs.

Now he says that violence in the city has escalated to a level that means no one feels safe.

‘That [crime] includes that two vehicles have been stolen from my house, I have had two burglaries, one of my cafes has been raided 20 times, my store has been raided,” he said. 2GB.

‘I’ve had everything you can think of [happen], and I’m not alone. There are victims here everywhere. He’s out of control.’

Alice Springs has seen an increase especially in property crimes: robberies, break-ins, property damage, but also assaults.

The number of property crimes, including car break-ins and thefts per year in the city, increased from 4,360 in 2017 to 7,820 last year.

As of January 2023, the only inner city prison is at capacity and the police are forced to house convicted criminals in police stations.

The Alice Springs Correctional Center, which has reached its capacity of 650 inmates, is expanding to add another 80 beds by the end of 2023.

“It’s very, very bad,” Clark told 2GB. “It’s so bad that people listening in Sydney wouldn’t believe what’s happening here.”

Mr Clark told 2GB that women and children are ‘scared everywhere in this city’, but the increasingly common use of machetes and axes by itinerant youth means the same fear is now felt by everyone.

‘If I come at you brandishing an axe, what will you do? If you wake up in the middle of the night and someone is beating you with an ax in your house, what do you do?

‘This is happening every night in this town and I’m not exaggerating. He’s out of control.

‘Crime lasts all day and lasts all night.’

He claimed that up to 300 intoxicated adults and youth now take over the city center every night.

Last month, ABC reported that cocky juvenile delinquents were trying to persuade the police to go after them as some kind of sport.

Some drove ‘head first’ in police cars to trigger high-speed chases, while friends livestreamed the chases to Facebook pages.

It was confirmed on Wednesday that Coles and BWS stores had decided to limit alcohol sales by removing liter bottles of liquor from shelves in the city.

On Sunday, the town’s library was partially destroyed, with 20 of its windows broken, after which police decided to lock a wandering, machete-wielding 13-year-old boy inside a supermarket for the safety of all involved.

There were also reports that a nurse was assaulted the same night after leaving work.

Mr Clark claimed that the next morning, another boy was bashing the “women’s car windows at 7am with a machete” in a local parking lot.

‘I get 120 to 150 messages a day about the safety of the community.’

On Thursday, Alice Springs Mayor Matt Paterson asked the defense forces, or federal police, to put “boots on the ground” on Alice, but they apparently refused.

That led opposition leader Peter Dutton to tell 9 News that the crisis in Alice Springs had become a “national disgrace.”

“The mayor there called the Attorney General, requesting additional federal police resources, and the Albanian government refused,” Dutton said.

And I’m worried that we’re going to see a tragedy in Alice Springs.

Paterson told ABC that all residents want is to “feel safe.”

“Every night after dark right now, day and night to be honest, we have children terrorizing the residents of Alice Springs, drunken adults on the street, 24 hours a day.

“All we ask is people who want to feel safe, I don’t think that’s too much to ask in the middle of the country in 2023…”

Northern Territory opposition leader Lia Finocchiaro said in a speech last month that Alice Springs businesses are closing because staff are too afraid to go to work.

“Behind the staggering crime statistics are families living in fear and business owners being pushed to the brink.”

“They are on the verge of collapse because the financial, physical and emotional costs are too much to bear.”

Mr Clark told 2GB that “we needed the defense force a long time ago”.

It’s worse than chaos.

2GB presenter Ben Fordham said his listeners want to see the Prime Minister tour Alice Springs so the government understands how dangerous the town has become.

His fellow 2GB presenter, Ray Hadley, backed up the call on Friday.

‘Get your ass in gear Prime Minister and get out there! Get out there and talk to people on the ground and then maybe it crosses your mind.

Federal Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said in a statement that “policing of Alice Springs is a Northern Territory government matter.”

NT Police Minister Kate Worden told ABC she did not want Alice Springs to become “a police state.”

Alice Springs is the only Australian city in the top 20 crime-affected places in the world, ranking 17th according to surveys compiled by Numbeo.

The other cities that made it to the top 100 were Rockhampton at 36, Cairns at 69, Darwin at 79 and Townsville at 96.

In 2022, government statistics showed that Alice Springs tripled the national average for recorded assaults, 2,556 per 100,000 people, compared to 790 for all of Australia.

Alice Spring’s assault rates represented an increase of 36 percent over the previous year.