{"id":299388,"date":"2021-05-18T16:49:20","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T06:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=299388"},"modified":"2021-05-18T19:14:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T09:14:58","slug":"police-target-knife-carrying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2021\/05\/18\/police-target-knife-carrying\/","title":{"rendered":"Police Target Knife-Carrying"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of the posters being used to support the campaign<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

May 18, 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n

Queensland police are targeting knife-carrying and knife-related crime in a new campaign launched on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The campaign was foreshadowed in Kingaroy last month by\u00a0Detective Inspector Chris Knight, who told local businesspeople that knife crime was rampant on the Gold Coast but was also “creeping” into smaller regional communities such as the South Burnett.<\/p>\n

\u201cWherever you have got young people carrying knives, you\u2019ve got no winners,” Det Insp Knight told the KCCI meet’n’greet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got an opportunity to get on top of it now before it becomes the problem we are seeing elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Commissioner Katarina Carroll said\u00a0police statistics showed knife-related offences in public across Queensland had risen 33 per cent since 2016.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The campaign, “I Live My Life \u2026 Without a Knife”,<\/em>\u00a0follows a successful trial in Logan in 2019 which saw a sustained 23 per cent decrease in knife-related crime in the district.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Carroll said the campaign was focused on prevention, with the aim of influencing the values of young people, educating them on the laws and empowering them to make the right choices.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs police, we see all too often the devastating consequences of knife-related crime in our community. When we analysed the data, we saw that most of the knife crime in the State was related to young people carrying knives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften the excuse provided to police for carrying a knife was to protect themselves.<\/p>\n

“We know that unfortunately much of the time, it\u2019s not the case.\u00a0 These knives are frequently used to commit serious crimes, so we are looking to empower people to make the choice of not carrying a knife.\u201d<\/p>\n