Surgeon considers moving family away from Victoria over Australian-African gang violence

SAMANTHA HUTCHINSON
AUGUST 2, 2018
A Melbourne surgeon is considering packing up his family of three and moving interstate after losing two cars and tens of thousands of dollars in valuables in a terrifying home invasion that marked the start of a three-day crime spree by an African and Australian gang.
A still-rattled Steven Kara­metos yesterday criticised the top rungs of Victoria Police for not doing enough to let residents know they were at risk of home invasions by gangs when there had been a string of attacks in the neighbourhood.
At the same time, a pair of service station owners whose franchise was hit during the crime spree have urged police to be more upfront with workers and owners about the threat they are up against from gang crime.
Less than a week after he woke up to find his North Balwyn family home’s door ajar, his BMW and Mercedes four-wheel drives missing from the driveway and the family’s wallets, keys and valuables taken while they slept, Mr Karametos is considering a move to Brisbane.
“It just feels as if no one is really safe at the moment,” he said.
“We’ve talked about moving and buying a house in a different area (of Melbourne), but where do you go that’s safe? It’s happening everywhere. And so we’ve been talking about moving to Brisbane, but it’s also a big jump.
“But the bigger question is why isn’t the government ­stopping this? You hear a lot of talk about the trauma of the (federal) government calling this sort of crime out, but what about the financial costs to the state of all this happening? And what about the huge insurance claims? We are just so lucky we slept through the attack and didn’t wake up.”
Mr Karametos contacted police on Monday, July 23, as soon as he realised his home had been burgled during the night.
By that night, the gang had driven the family’s Mercedes GLC 250 to the Mill Street APCO service station in Lara in Melbourne’s southwest.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, two men of African appearance and a Caucasian man emerged from the car armed with hammers, which they used to smash their way through the service station’s front doors and into an office where an attendant hid.
Once inside, they forced the employee to hand over cash and tens of thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes. A fourth offender remained in the car.
The gang then used the Mercedes to carry out another home invasion in Camberwell on Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday morning, also while a family slept inside. A female resident who woke up during the burglary confronted the intruders and then chased them outside, before hurling a brick at their car as they attempted to flee.
The plan backfired when the brick hit a car window, which immobilised the Mercedes, prompting the intruders to use the keys they allegedly took from inside the Camberwell home to steal a third car.
APCO Service Stations’ owners, Peter and Rob Anderson, have offered $15,000 for any information to catch the thugs.
Peter Anderson said he had been enraged by police who he claimed had consistently downplayed the rate of petrol station robberies to owners, and the seriousness of attacks on attendants. “The police have consistently told us we don’t have a problem; it feels like they don’t want this sort of information out there because they don’t want the public to know how bad (gang crime) can actually be,” he said.
His brother said petrol station owners felt as if night-time raids by gangs had become an inevit­ability in metropolitan areas.
Victoria Police would not comment on the home invasions or whether arrests had been made. “As the investigation remains ongoing, it would be in­appropriate to provide further comments,” a spokesman said.
Last week, a spokesman said officers had located the Mercedes used in the Lara petrol station hit in a Camberwell street about 4am on Wednesday, July 25. When pressed on the rate of service station robberies, Victoria Police said it had achieved a significant reduction in the number of cigarette thefts in the past 12 months.
Police Minister Lisa Neville said the government had made inroads addressing high-harm crimes, with the help of new anti-gangs officers as well as 3135 new police recruits entering stations across the state. “Police are focused on making arrests and government will continue to give the resources police need to reduce this type of offending,” she said.
“Victoria Police’s tactics against networked youth offenders engaged in high harm crimes is (sic) having an impact.”
Victorian crime statistics for the year to March revealed a falling crime rate, and steep declines in the number of aggravated burglaries, which fell about 12 per cent to their lowest in a decade.
Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Andrew Crisp said home invasions, carjackings and high-harm crimes remained a central concern to police, as did youth offenders who were showing a tendency to commit about four offences per offender.
“We’re seeing carjackings, we’re seeing home invasions and again the brazen nature of some of that offending is worrying, it is of concern,” Mr Crisp said in June.