Parents attack youth violence

MARCH 26: Members of the Safer Communities Alliance are hoping to raise awareness about public safety. The “Rally For Our Safety” will start at 9am on Sunday at the Cudgen Leagues football grounds and aims to show the strength of our community and people power.

Crystal Spencer

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“WE want to do things the right way so we can make some changes for the next generation.”

These were the words from mother-of-two Helen Rowston, one of the Safer Communities Alliance’s founding members.

From humble beginnings as a group of concerned parents, the alliance is expecting thousands to attend their peaceful rally this Sunday.

The “Rally For Our Safety” will start at 9am at the Cudgen Leagues football grounds and aims to show the strength of our community and people power.

A petition will circulate at the rally calling for increased frontline police in the Tweed Byron area, more police presence on the streets to ensure adequate response times and funding for youth initiatives. It will be presented to Tweed MP Geoff Provest at the end of the day.

Mrs Rowston said the group started after a spate of bashings in Coolangatta at the end of last year.

“The parents I was talking to were really concerned, because we felt there was nothing we could do, but we couldn’t just sit around and not act on it,” Mrs Rowston said.

“About 16 parents with kids around the same age just starting to go out got together.

“It was quite a debate; we discussed a lot of issues about what was going wrong.”

The Cabarita mother said they pinpointed issues such as cross-border policing, transport, reducing the tolerance to violence, raising social conscience regarding it and more police.

Following a meeting with various groups, including councillors, police and youth workers, Mrs Rowston said it became “overwhelmingly apparent how much crime was not reported”.

“Especially as Kingscliff missed out on one extra police car because of a minute number.

“We established that we just really need to be reporting everything.”

Mrs Rowston said Sunday’s rally would be a fun day, not an anti-youth event.

“A really strong focus that came out at the beginning was the need to be really positive about it and we’ve kept that going the whole way through.

“The youth workers are doing a brilliant job, we just need more of them and they need more funding.”

Mrs Rowston said the alliance had been absolutely amazed by the support they had received from the whole Tweed community.

“I’ve been going around with the petition and everyone’s got a story; everybody’s affected in some way.

“And a lot of people want things to change by focusing on doing things the right way.”

The petition can be signed online at www.gopetition.com/petitions/rally-for-our-safety.html.

Be sure to grab tomorrow's Tweed Daily News for your free Rally For Our Safety poster.