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It’s what he calls the “little wins” that motivates sergeant Matt Hunt to keep heading down to Hargreaves Mall each day.
It’s there that he and a small group of other officers from Bendigo Police’s tasking unit try to engage with the community they serve.
Sergeant Hunt has been manning the police caravan in the mall for the past six weeks, in an effort to find out why some young people feel they have nothing better to do than cause trouble and disrupt shoppers.
“What we’ve been finding is by spending time with them and talking to them and actually learning about them as people we can drill down and find out what is affecting them and find out why they’re attending up at the mall,” he said.
“A lot of it comes down to just leaving school, they’ve got no ambition no motivation, but we’ve had a couple of successes.”
Sergeant Hunt said one of those successes involved an 18-year-old youth who was until recently a regular feature in the Bendigo central business district, and a known troublemaker.
“He was down there as a bit of a leader, he would somehow be a magnet,” he said.
“We just sat down one day and spoke to him and said what ‘training have you got? what schooling have you got?’ and he said 'I left school but I want to be a barista, I just want to work'. He had some mental health problems as well, and we had him engaged with the mental health system that assessed him and realised he could actually function properly and he was then put in touch with another group that got him a job.”
Since helping him find gainful employment, Sergeant Hunt said he had seen the man in the mall just once.
“That day he came down, sat with some people and had a bit of a feed – wasn't loud, wasn't abusive, just sat there and then left,” he said.
“I haven't seen him since.”
The tasking unit was recently re-established in Bendigo after the introduction of protective services officers freed up more police resources for the prevention of crime, rather than tackling issues once they get out of hand.
“It’s a bit more of a proactive approach, getting down here, getting among the kids and the adults that have caused some unrest around the traders,” Sergeant Hunt said.
“Just to find out why they’re down here, what motivates them to be down here and whether we can help them in there endeavours of gaining employment or getting back into the school system.”
While acknowledging it is a slow process – “we’re not going to change the world overnight” – Sergeant Hunt said so far the unit was making inroads, and would soon expand to operate in other parts of Bendigo and the wider police service area.
“I don’t want people just to think we’re focusing on the mall because it’s a big part of it, but there’s a greater Bendigo area that we’ve got to support as well,” he said.