Systematic bashings: the real inner Sydney blight?

I recently reported witnessing and stopping the vicious bashing of a transvestite sex worker in William Street (City News 7 May). Evidence is emerging it was not an isolated incident.

A frontline worker at a Kings Cross social work agency has since spoken to another transvestite worker who had a black eye and extensive severe bruising to her body after being bashed.

She said suburban males were visiting the Kings Cross and Darlinghurst area weekly for the purpose of assaulting her colleagues, who were reluctant to report the incidents to the police because they were not trusted either.

Other serious incidents are in the news, with the near-fatal early-morning assault of a policewoman who was hit in the head with a brick and robbed.

Then was the shooting of a man in Kings Cross, made famous by the Chanel Nine interview with a young clubber who witnessed the crime. Her frank language, her “chk-chk-boom” sound FX and her excellent powers of mimicry have sent the online clip viral and her words are even being mixed into dance music.

Anti-pub campaigners are predictably using these incidents to support Council’s determination to regulate Kings Cross into quietitude but they miss the point. The gay-bashings and the assault on the policewoman were not alcohol-related. The shooting may have been, but the problem there is surely that a man brought a gun with him on a night out. Punishing the last venue he was at is not going to stop him, and nor will it change the thug culture of a small minority of visitors to the city.

The only thing effective against them is the Police. Extra police numbers in recent weeks has dropped the assault rate “off the radar” and this trend is encouraging.

While Council and the police focus on alcohol-related violence, most of which is minor, it seems the worst violence is not alcohol-related. This surely should be the focus of public safety policy.