Police officers have an important role to help promote community harmony in a multicultural society, but it must never usurp their most important function: to keep people safe by preventing crime and arresting offenders.
If the people of Melbourne are terrified on the streets while they are supposed to be getting together and having fun in the Moomba tradition, all other bets are off.
Let us not mince words. Victoria Police and the state government have become too timid towards ethnic-based gangs. Their timidity is because of political correctness. Police have been handcuffed by fears of being labelled racist. The ethnic gangs then become emboldened and believe they can indulge in violence with impunity.
The underlying causes of the breakdown in law and order on Saturday night go back several years, when Victoria Police was sued for compensation for what was described as “racial profiling” of young African men in the Flemington and North Melbourne area. If racial profiling means targeting people simply because of their race, then that’s not on. But it is just as abhorrent when police are reluctant to check suspicious activity for fear of being accused of racism.