Throughout the 2019 mid-year school holiday period, Northern Territory Police undertook a range of activities, as a part of Operation Blyth, to ensure everyone was able to have a safe and enjoyable break.
Operation Blyth ran across the holidays from 28 June 2019 to 23 July 2019 with a focus on preventing anti-social behaviour, reduced property crime and road safety throughout the Greater Darwin area. Working collaboratively with our partner agencies including Transit Safety Officers, Public Housing Safety Officers, Larakia Nation, Parks and Wildfire and the two City Councils, we delivered effective and coordinated safety outcomes for the Darwin community through joint patrols, targeted activities in high risk areas and community engagement.
Our dedicated social order policing activities achieved significant positive outcomes in our public areas which can be troubled by anti-social behaviour. These efforts included the apprehension on 470 people for protective custody, the destruction of 1685 litres of alcohol, 94 liquor or summary infringement notices issued, one drug infringement notice issued and 97 arrests for various offences and warrants. 14 people were also issued with banning notices excluding them for 72 hours from certain public areas.
Front Line officers supported Strike Force Trident investigators across this period to ensure youth related crime was managed across the community. This involved providing ongoing support to the Palmerston Youth Week activities including the Baker Boy concert. Although there was some property crime experienced across this period, pleasingly the occurrences were considered relevantly low. This was achieved through police targeting repeat offenders, use of available tools to make committing crime less desirable such as the road spikes and reducing opportunities for crimes to be committed.
Darwin and Road Policing Command were very active across this holiday conducting high visibility patrols in public areas and known high risks areas for road trauma to ensure people were safe on our roads. Road policing activities were focused on the Fatal Five – speeding, drink and drug driving, failure to wear a seatbelt, driving while fatigued and distraction and inattention were targeted. Across the period, there was one fatal crash in the greater Darwin area.
Unfortunately, police detected significant unacceptable behaviour on our roads through the 47 dedicated RBT stations and other road stops that identified 35 positive breath tests from 4378 tests and 13 positive drug driving tests from 25 roadside tests. 720 traffic infringement notices were issued for offences including:
365 x Speeding Offences
8 Seat Belts
1 x U-Turns at lights
1 x Expired Licence
110 x Unregistered Vehicles
11 x Mobile Phone
16 x Intersection Offences
18 x Other Traffic Offences
8 people were arrested and another 13 issued with a summons or notices to appear in court for offences from drink and drug driving to driving whilst disqualified and other traffic offences.
Commander Travis Wurst of Darwin Command said, “Having returned back to school, we can be safe in the knowledge that the majority of the Darwin community enjoyed the holiday break without stepping out of line. Unfortunately, there is always a small numbers of criminals that choose to ruin the holidays for others. We have successfully put in a significant effort to minimise this impact and wish to thank the community for their ongoing support of police and our partner agencies in a community safety efforts.”
