Byron Bay articles of interest.

Police assembled for Police Memorial Day in Lismore last year. Police Shortfall: Parsons IT HAS never been a secret that the Northern Rivers suffers from a shortage of police resources and an abnormally high rate of stress leave. But now the State Government has officially recognised the problem with the full release of the statewide audit into police resources, conducted by former assistant commissioner Peter Parsons. The long-awaited audit shows that in the Northern Region – from Newcastle to the Queensland border – the Tweed-Byron Local Area Command (LAC) and Richmond LAC occupy the second and third spots for stress leave vacancies, with 15 and 14 empty spots respectively. Richmond LAC was operating with 32 police officers under strength as [...]

A heavy police presence helped to improve behaviour last year. A CRIME report on Byron Bay has reinforced the need for a CCTV system in the CBD, with the town’s rate of drunken assaults well above the state average. But cameras may be a while off yet with no funding currently available to Byron Shire Council. Last November, The Northern Star reported on Tweed Byron Local Area Command (LAC) police and Byron Shire Council working to tackle alcohol-related assaults in the Byron CBD. Police put forward CCTV as a solution. Last month, council released their draft Safer Community Compact strategy for 2012-2016. It showed that Byron Shire ranked 11th in NSW for non-domestic related assaults in 2010. Forty-seven per cent [...]

CONTROVERSIAL plans for a new $8 million Tweed police headquarters facing the beachfront at Kingscliff were last night given the green light despite objections from Tweed Shire Council planning staff and opposition from nearby residents and businesses. Three members of the Northern Region Joint Planning Panel voted to give “in-principle” approval for the complex, which residents fear will cause car parking congestion in surrounding streets and rob beachgoers of parking spots along Marine Pde. Two panel members were absent. The decision came despite a recommendation from council planners for the application to be referred to NSW Planning Minister Brad Hazard, with advice it be rejected largely because of insufficient car parking for police officers and the public. The panel previously [...]

Byron schoolies working group has not heard from promoter IT IS rare for a Byron Bay development application to receive a unanimous response, but that appears to be the case for a proposed schoolies event in Byron Bay later this year. The rather cheeky proposal has managed to raise the ire of all members of the schoolies working group, including the police and council, by inferring support from key schoolies stakeholders who all say they have had no contact from the promoter. A proposal for a doof party lists the Byron Youth Service, Byron Underage Drinking and Drug Initiative (BUDDI), Project U Turn and volunteer support groups, the Red Frogs and the Byron Schoolies Safety Response team all as potential [...]

TWEED Byron police command is trialling a new online community policing concept using Facebook to combat crime. The NSW Police Force yesterday announced the trial of Project Eyewatch, created to allow local area commands and their communities to exchange information using police co-ordinated homepages on social media network Facebook. Crime co-ordinator Sergeant Stuart Crawford said the project was all about timeliness. “It’s all about getting timely information to the public,” Sgt Crawford said. “It will enable us to communicate with the community quickly and easily.” Sgt Crawford said Tweed-Byron officers and members of the Banora Point Neighbourhood Watch had attended a training day in Sydney to learn how to best utilise the new communication tool. “We will continue to work [...]

BYRON BAY reverberated to the sound of sirens yesterday afternoon as police cars roared into a crowded CBD in pursuit of a black, late-model, Subaru wagon. About 2.15pm the Subaru, thought to be driven by a couple wanted on the Gold Coast, raced up Lawson St at high speed, chased by several highway patrol cars. Witnesses reported it was cut off by police at the Fletcher St round-about, forcing the fugitives to spin around and head back out of townover the railway crossing. About 30 seconds later it roared back into town, skidding into Jonson St the wrong way around the round-about and smashing into a hatchback driven by a woman. The shocked woman sat paralysed in her vehicle while [...]

THE Tweed-Byron area police command remains the drink-driving capital of Northern New South Wales. More than a quarter of the Northern Region’s drink-driving offences over the Easter long weekend were detected in the two shires. And the region, which stretches from Newcastle to the border, detected the highest number of drink-drivers in the state. Northern Region traffic co-ordinator acting Senior Sergeant Glenn Trubody said the detections were part of Operation Tortoise, which ran from Thursday to Monday. “Police conducted 2384 breath tests, and for that there were 27 drink-driving offences detected,” Acting Snr Sgt Trubody said. “There were 38 speeding infringements, 10 seat belt offences, 100 other traffic infringement tickets and 21 other traffic charges.” “Tweed-Byron was the highest in [...]

POLICE are appealing for information regarding the theft of 60 laptop computers from Byron Bay High School. Sometime last Tuesday night or early Wednesday the high school on Broken Head Road was broken into through the main building. Thieves made off with 60 green Lenova student laptops, a data projector and a sum of cash. The stolen property was worth more than $31,000, police said. Tweed-Byron Local Area Command Inspector Darren Steele said the offenders forced their way into a room in the main building, which had bars on the windows. The room was where the laptops were stored. Investigations are continuing into the theft and police are not releasing any additional details. The laptops were allocated to students as part of [...]

Thin blue lines: A leaked NSW police report reveals that northern regional commands are grossly understaffed. A LEAKED NSW Police report reveals regional commands are operating with almost 70 less police than they require. The intelligence report, a copy of which was obtained by The Northern Star, suggests the Richmond and Tweed/Byron Local Area Commands are in dire need of more police officers to help ease a heavy and stressful workload. The report suggests Richmond LAC should have an additional 36 officers and Tweed/Byron LAC an extra 32 police. Due to the staffing shortfall, officers are dealing with almost double the number of incidents as their metropolitan counterparts. Incidents per officer in the Tweed/Byron command stands at 1128 and 1120 for [...]

Senior Sergeant Bill Darnell is on the lookout for drivers doing the wrong thing. BILL DARNELL wants you to have a happy and safe Christmas and new year. And if you speed or drink-drive on the roads the highway patrol officers he commands as the Northern Region traffic co-ordinator will take your licence away. Tonight, Senior Sergeant Darnell and his officers will launch Operation Safe Arrival on the NSW North Coast – a two-week traffic blitz aimed at preventing road deaths as holidaymakers traverse Australia’s most dangerous road to reach the Northern Rivers. Snr Sgt Darnell said 28 people had already been killed on the Pacific Highway so far this year – up 10 on the same period in 2009. [...]

The Byron Schoolies HUB in Apex Park by the beach swung into action last weekend. Co-ordinator of the schoolies response group Nicqui Yazdi was very pleased with the response to the call for volunteers to help man the HUB 24/7 untill Dec 6. Over 100 volunteers shifts have now been covered. Local police, Schoolies organisers and the Mayor have all slammed national News Limited reports of brawling in Byron Bay last weekend. Local youth worker and Schoolies HUB coordinator Nicqui Yazdi said it was completely overblown. ‘The result of the reporting is that parents from all around Australia are needlessly worried and have been ringing us asking if everything is alright,’ she told The Echo. ‘Even the schoolies are upset – [...]

SCHOOL leavers received positive feedback from Byron Bay leaders yesterday following their first weekend of schoolies celebrations, despite negative pub-licity from one heavily reported incident. Tweed-Byron Local Area Commander, Acting Superintendent Owen King, was frustrated that the ‘isolated incident’ was taken out of context, adding that nothing unexpected or out of theordinary occurred over the weekend. “The general report card for schoolies in Byron Bay on the weekend was good, and that comes from police, paramedics and the volunteers working at the HUB,” he said. “There were a number of incidents that police intervened in and this particular one that’s been reported in the national media was just a couple of kids having a fight. “There were 40 or 50 [...]

Schoolies HUB volunteers getting hand-out packs ready for distribution during schoolies celebrations are (from left) Marty Saam, Nicqui Yazdi (Byron Schoolies Safety Response & HUB Coordinator) and Annie Krige. THE first wave of schoolies is expected to hit Byron Bay today as teenagers start arriving for their end of year celebrations. Volunteers were busy finalising preparations and erecting the HUB tent on the beachfront in Apex Park yesterday. Lorrie Thomson, manager of the East on Byron and Waves resorts, said while most places around town were full, schoolies still only represented half of the bookings, but she was expecting the full onslaught from next weekend. “The bottom line is it’s great for the economy,” she said. “We will get a [...]

ALCOHOL-related arrests account for more than half of the arrests made each year in the Tweed-Byron region. Although the number of alcohol-fuelled arrests is on the decline, police are concerned the figures are still too high. Tweed-Byron crime manager Det Insp Shane Diehm said 3076 arrests were made in the last financial year in the Tweed-Byron command. He said 51 per cent of those arrests were alcohol-related. However, Det Insp Diehm said this was an improvement over previous years. “Two years ago, 58 per cent of all arrests over the year were alcohol-related, and last year 57 per cent of arrests were due to alcohol-related offences, so we are seeing an improvement,” he said. Det Insp Diehm said police were [...]

VISITORS may be responsible for making Byron Bay the cocaine capital of regional NSW, according to new statistics released yesterday. The party town had the highest number of recorded incidents of cocaine possession outside of Sydney in 2009, and was the only non-metropolitan area to make the top-10 list. It showed the third-highest number of incidents relative to population, while scoring seventh place overall with 12 recorded incidents. Tweed-Byron Local Area Command Acting Superintendent Owen King defended Byron’s reputation, saying the high number of cocaine detections was mostly the result of targeted operations at major events. “We would attribute the majority of that to the big festivals where we had specific drug detection dog operations,” he said. “From an operational [...]