Prejudice Motivated Crime strategy launch
// July 8th, 2011 // AVP news, Media discussion, Within Victoria
Melbourne, July 8, 2011 – The Anti-Violence Project today welcomed Victoria Police’s new Prejudice Motivated Crime (PMC) Strategy launch and its leaders looked forward to the establishment of a PMC Community Reference group to further increase the confidence of victims in reporting to police.
AVP board member Jayne Monroe attended a private PMC Strategy briefing before its public launch at Melbourne Town Hall where she was joined by AVP Connect Project Worker Zhitian Zhang, the individual developing the AVP’s rural and regional violence reporting network.
Ms Monroe said she was delighted that the Strategy would now move into its next phase in which it is hoped an outcome would be the rapid formation of a Reference Group to connect existing and successful community-driven reporting mechanisms with the Strategy.
“We (the AVP) are looking forward to standing alongside multi-culture and multi-faith communities in building our existing successes into the Strategy and its outcomes. AVP is breaking down barriers to the reporting of prejudice motivated crime and this Strategy moves the bar another step in a positive direction”, Jayne Monroe added.
AVP Connect worker Zhitian Zhang said after the launch that the connection between the Police PMC Strategy and the AVP’s work in rural and regional areas was strong, especially around sharing knowledge and data on how existing community driven violence reporting mechanisms could inform police in their development of education resources that reach into all parts of the state via the PMC.
“Acting Chief Commissioner Ken Lay, speaking at the launch, clearly identified Victoria Police’s understanding that “trust”, as a factor, still limits the ability of people to report PMC to police. He will be relying on community organisations to continue delivering alternative reporting mechanisms, such as the AVP’s violence reporting service, in order to make the PMC Strategy successful. The AVP is actively expanding its activities across the state in response to this need”, he said.
AVP Executive Director, Greg Adkins said following the launch that brilliant initiatives such as this Victoria Police Prejudice Motivated Crime Strategy needed equally strong and publically funded community violence reporting and data collection processes handshaking with public policy strategies.
“AVP already provides the reporting mechanism from within the GLBTi communities but sadly these services are run without any government funding and limited due to available resource. “This PMC Strategy launch will re-focus public policy makers on the need to fund organisations such as AVP while we increase discussion within the GLBTi community about stepping-up and reporting prejudice motivated crime.
“We urge all people experiencing prejudice motivated violence and crime, or who have information about them, to call Police on 000 and when safe, contact the AVP via antiviolence.info” he said.
CHECK-OUT http://www.police.vic.gov.au/content.asp?Document_ID=32278 for further information or contact the AVP Executive Director greg@antiviolence.info
