Alice Springs baker says Anthony Albanese should sack NT Police minister as crime escalates

A baker living in an inland town overrun by violence has been unleashed by the “shameful” inaction of the government of Anthony Albanese.

Darren Clarke’s bakery in Alice Springs, in the center of the Northern Territory, has been robbed 41 times in three years.

Recently, the city has been thrown into chaos with gangs of youths roaming the streets at night, breaking into businesses and engaging in extreme violence.

The prime minister flew to Alice Springs on Tuesday amid mounting pressure to visit the city and tackle the crime problem that locals say is now “out of control”.

Clarke, who runs the Action For Alice 2020 Facebook page, took aim at NT Police Minister Kate Worden and asked her to resign.

“Anthony Albanese when he gets off the plane, the first thing he has to say to (NT chief minister) Natasha Fyles is ‘Kate Worden, go,'” he said in an interview with Sky News on Tuesday.

He has to go and he has to go today.

Crime levels in the inner city have risen since the government lifted alcohol bans in July last year.

The problems were ‘immediate’, police said, when the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act ceased on July 17, 2022, meaning alcohol became available for the first time in many of the indigenous peoples’ camps. of the Territory since 2007.

“I’ve been mugged 41 times,” Clarke said, adding that many other locals had experienced the same thing.

“This place is totally out of control, the violence on the streets is out of control, the domestic violence that you see on the streets every night and during the day is out of control and something has to be done.”

Youngsters have terrorized the city’s residents by lounging around the CBD at night, while many have made a habit of breaking into residents’ homes.

Clarke said the vandalism was often just “senseless violence” but added that some youths broke into homes and businesses to obtain alcohol and steal car keys.

“They are coming in with sharp weapons, they are coming in with machetes, tomahawks, hunting knives,” he said.

‘Something has to give and something has to give immediately.’

Clarke said she had seen people hit over the head multiple times with tire levers.

“A woman was stabbed in a domestic violence issue here in the city, she actually almost had her head cut off, she was cut from one ear to the other,” Clarke said.

‘Our government in the NT has completely failed the Alice Springs community and the people who live here.’

Mr Clarke asked Mr Albanese to clean up the streets and provide a safe out of town facility for abandoned children to live.

“Mr. Albanese goes to places where the rivers overflow… come mate because the rivers of grog are overflowing,” he said.

‘Get up here and take a breather and show some leadership.

“It’s not just people like me who are being robbed, indigenous people throughout this community are being attacked. This week we have attacked four indigenous businesses.

Mr Albanese will join Ms Fyles on Tuesday to discuss the growing crisis with locals.

Some residents say they live in fear and are forced to hide indoors as gangs of hundreds of children, some as young as five, riot in the streets.

When the police are called, no one answers or the officers are too busy elsewhere to answer.

Clarke previously told 2GB that the problem was due to behavior, not race.

The whole town is suffering. It doesn’t matter what color you are,’ she said.

‘They don’t discriminate. They attack you. These children are crying out for help. They don’t have mentors.

The business owner had called on the Prime Minister to see for himself just how overrun with violence Alice Springs had become.

I’ll take you to see some of these kids and sit with them, mate. Listen to the children,’ he said.

‘Listen to what they see in their houses. Blood splattered the walls, the screams of her aunts pounded the floor.

‘It’s time, people. Do you want a voice Albo, do you want a voice? Come here.’

Local MP Marion Scrymgour, a member of the Lingiari federal office, said the lifting of the grog ban with the expiration of the Stronger Futures Act had led to a level of violence she had never experienced.

“I just find it unacceptable in this day and age that violence against Aboriginal women in this town generates very little urgency from anyone, it’s appalling,” Ms Scrymgour told The Australian.

She said that there was also the problem of lawlessness among the youth.

“They no longer respect the law or the culture and then there are the adults and the level of violence, and it’s not just male on male or male on female, there’s a really bad level of female on female violence and particularly under the influence of alcohol,’ he said.

“I’ve seen some horrible fights in and around the Alice Springs area where women are just drunk and stomping on (other women’s) heads.”