Source : Perth Now news
It’s an affluent, inner city suburb with tree-lined streets where homes sell for about $1.3 million.
It is surrounded by a hub of bustling cafes and small businesses, but there is one thing tarnishing Ninth Avenue in Inglewood, Perth: an apartment complex.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Officers smash way into Inglewood’s troubled unit block to make arrest.
The block is the site of government housing units that have become plagued by violence and antisocial behaviour.
In six months, police have been called to the complex 306 times.
In the last week alone at least five people have been arrested.
“Our community is scared,” local Melissa Molinari told 7NEWS.
“There’s yelling, screaming, people being attacked, people being shouted at, verbally and racially abused.”
Mobile vision captured inside and around the complex lays bare the shocking behaviour.
In one video a woman is dragged by the hair near the front entrance.
In another a man is seen hurling an object through the window of a unit, screaming at the tenant inside.
Some show fights happening on the property.
In one a tenant is crying in fear as another woman yells obscenities at her.
On the night of Saturday, May 10, a 34-year-old who lives nearby the complex was allegedly attacked in a carpark across the road while out for dinner with his girlfriend.
Security video shows a man run at the victim before repeatedly punching him, kicking him and throwing him to the ground.
It is a scene that is still playing over and over in the head of the victim’s father.
“Shocked. Terrified. Angry. All of those emotions,” he said after watching the CCTV.
“He’s physically bruised. Scratched but shaken, traumatised. Loss of confidence. Those sorts of things. You know, that feeling of ‘why me?’”
The accused fled the scene but two days was later was allegedly captured on a doorbell camera smashing the front window of a home near the units.
He was arrested and charged later that day.
The father told 7NEWS that crime has progressively become worse over the last 12 months.
“People have been verbally abused, had knives waved at them. This wasn’t in a sleazy alley somewhere. This was in central Inglewood,” he said.
It’s not just residents that live near the units who are frightened. Many of those inside the complex are equally scared.
Jacqueline Butchart is one tenant who has spent many sleepless nights worried about what is happening in the apartment complex.
She avoids bringing her young kids to her place out of concern for them.
“As soon as I walk into my unit now, I just lock the door straight away,” she told 7NEWS.
“It weighs on my mind — am I going to be attacked when I get home? Or is something going to be happening when I get home?
“It is making it very unsafe for those of us that are just trying to live here, just trying to have a home.”
Ahmed Abdi, another tenant, says he too feels unsafe in his apartment.
“They are fighting here sometimes on the ground, fighting by hand, like boxing,” he said.
“I’m very scared. Sometimes I run inside my house and I lock it.”
For months residents have been sending complaints about the tenants to the Department of Communities, hoping for action.
According to the Residential Tenancies Act, a court can terminate a tenancy if the tenant has “intentionally or recklessly caused or is likely intentionally or recklessly to cause serious damage to the premises or injury to the lessor or the property manager of the premises or any person in occupation of or permitted on adjacent premises”.
Housing Minister John Carey said any decision to evict a social housing tenant lies with a magistrate.
“We are taking it seriously. Police and the Department of Communities are working together, this includes issuing banning notices and they are taking other action but that has to follow due legal process,” he said.
“We are looking at additional measures around CCTV, but we are also working through enforcing a liquor restriction.”
Tenants say more action is needed.
“I’d rather take my chances on the street than spend another night here,” one told 7NEWS.
