After reading yet more articles on brutal home invasions today in Melbourne, what are you legally allowed to do to protect you and your family if they try to enter your home?
For example, are you allowed to take to them with a baseball bat or similar?
If you hurt one of these youths (sometimes under 18), do you become legally liable for their injuries?
Thanks Tsunamisurfer. And Edited, although they seem to be doing a pretty good job of singling themselves out.
pretty good job of singling themselves out.
likewise with those male military age "refugees" that flooded Germany and Europe last year.
we don't watch the news. are your referring to these articles?
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=melbourne+home+invasion&s…
Yeah those are the ones.. seems to be an ongoing problem.
You cannot just hit someone with a bat as they enter your property unless they are a real threat to yourself or family.
That's subjective though. I'd consider anyone who broke into my family home as a threat to me and my family, let alone if they make a quick movement or appear to be holding something.
Correct.
Australia has terrible laws around what a property owner or resident can do to people that are actually entering your home whilst you are in it.
To my mind if someone is entering your secured residence then there is a legitimate case for lethal force to be used without a homicide conviction just based on the act of breaking in - that is clearly a threat.
Agree.
If this was my street i would be door knocking on every house to fight these
Thugs im sure if everyone complied these
Thugs wont be coming back.
Each house should have a siren then the whole street comes firing at them.
@stussy:
Great feel good story
1 or 2 will show up
The rest will be peeking out of their windows pretending they didn't hear your siren
Will be a bit hard not to hear a siren that is going of at every house hold wich is linked to one another.
At the end of the day we have to look out for one another if not these thugs will win.
Agreed, anyone game enough to enter my home when I'm there is clearly willing to have a violent confrontation, and is presumably armed or able to overpower the owners.
If all I have is a sword, and I'm already holding it in a defensive posture, I'm certainly not putting it down or letting it go…
You're either amazingly scared, completely lack empathy or are a sociopath. Or more likely, this is the internet and not real life so it's easy to have these opinions on a 'threat'
What you are actually saying above is - with no other context, it doesn't matter if a 14 year old is trying to break into a property, they deserve to die and you are willing to execute them.
This is an example of the thinking that doesn't understand a proportionate response. When you have a child that disobeys you I assume you react by chopping its head off - as a lesson to its brothers or sisters?
I agree with you on the point about there being terrible laws (mostly because I think laws should be a lot clearer and there should be fewer of them) but having a (terrible) law about someone breaking into your property is missing the point.
Wouldn't it be much better if we could deal with the issues that lead to people breaking into property in the first place - so they don't do that ?
I'd rather explain to the cops why the home invader is in critical condition than write a victim impact statement..
@tommyc: I feel for all your negative votes.
What you're saying is technically correct, however in the middle of a fight the chance of accidently killing someone while trying to protect themselves is very high especially for the untrained. I don't agree that the defenders should be legally required to prove their innocence.
At the same time, I agree that in some situations (e.g. people with mental problem) the person doesn't deserved to be harmed from a moral perspective. However keep in mind when in those situations, the person who is mentally can still act violently and be a threat.
IMO, if the person entered your house, holds a weapon OR doesn't hold a weapon AND doesn't leave your house upon request, it shouldn't be the home owner's responsibility to prove their innocence in the event the home invader gets injured/seriously injured/killed.
For people who hasn't tried it before, it takes a lot of skill and force to disable someone with non lethal force and it just not always possible without putting the home owner's life further at risk.
Breaking in doesnt automatically mean someone should die. But when someone chooses to do that they are the ones putting themselves at risk. They might not deserve to die. But they don't deserve the same safety as the people sleeping in those homes. Why would anyone with a family take any chances?
If you're woken up in the middle of the night because someones breaking into your house. Why would you jeopardize your families safety and not react as quickly as possible in whatever means possible to be certain your family remain safe?
I know I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to my kids. Especially if there was something I could have done to prevent it.
@zaidoun: Yeah, that's why home invasions there are usually fatal to the occupants. They're not expecting it and the invaders will shoot before they can react. Personally I'd rather live in a country where most home invaders just run away when startled rather than shoot me out of fear. Never mind more people die by their own weapons than those of invaders.
By all means, remove an actual threat (ie, someone with a weapon), but if everyone escalates first, everyone is less safe.
@mxlegend99: If I was in the USA, I'd probably shoot someone there first knowing they probably had a gun. Here, fortunately, invasions are very very unlikely to result in fatalities unless the occupant is involved in some pretty shady stuff or escalates first. There's generally 2 types of invaders in Australia (the 99% that will run, and the 1% that will probably kill you if you miss, or have their mates kill you in retaliation.)
@tommyc: Thread is full of tough guys. (Strangely enough the next comment after yours is pretty similar but has +ve score)
@tommyc: yeah, obviously they've got issues. But, damn, they sure do have some freedom over there.
Seriously though, I think at the moment our laws (at least in Victoria) are not in favour of the victims of home invasions. When someone invades your home you shouldn't have to think about whether the way in which you defend yourself is unlawful.
The situation would need to be assessed as it happens. It could be a stupid kid or a gang of armed thugs. Whatever the case, yeah, there is a threat, but how much of a threat? a young scared local kid looking for a quick cash grab is NOT the same as armed gang that look like they absolutely mean business.
If it is an armed gang of thugs, and my family were home, I certainly would arm myself, but I would also retreat to a locked room, phone the cops, and be screaming at the perps that if they enter my room, they die.
if it was a young stupid kid and he was shitting himself, if a local, I'd march him home and have a word to his parents. if the parents were a bit shit, possibly bring in the cops. If they were shocked and genuinely upset, leave it at that.
It could be a million other scenarios. Everyone would need to be as reasonable as possible. Taking to someones head with a bat no matter the circumstances will NOT go down well as you clearly decided to not assess and respond with appropriate force, you just decide to go full ret… um, too far.
Hey. AngryLeftist. One in seven Africans aged 18-30 have been charged for violent crime. Imagine if there was any other ethnicity with similar stats. But then you couldn't parade your righteous indignation, could you?
@AngryChicken: Chinese and German. I don't know what it is to you though. My entire family are migrants. None of us have ever kicked a door in or bashed anyone on a bus for a phone.
@AngryChicken: Thanks for publicly shaming yourself ;)
Don't delete your comment now. I'm happy people will be able to see the wild things you think.
@AngryChicken:
So you're advocating that we waste parts of an animal that has already been slaughtered for the sake of making sense in the land of the plenty?
You think that Indian food doesn't use non Western acceptable ingredients. You seem to pick and choose (poor) examples.
I smell a hypocrite calling other hypocrites. That's an infinity loop of hypocrisy.
Yeah, they cause 80% of violent crime in the US while only being 15% of the population. It's no different here. Everyone knows they are a problem, it is just the MSM hits everyone over the head if they even think about it and blames the residents for not being inclusive enough.
Don't worry - the media and government will soon hide inconvenient statistics from the public.
@freemoneyhunter: I think it's a little disingenuous to draw parallels between people of African descent in the US with recent African migrants here. Completely different groups, completely different histories. Not to mention it's not all African refugee groups here that are having issues.
@freakatronic 1 in 7, wow, do you have a source for that statistic?
@freakatronic: You and your family must have been members of the asian gangs rampaging through the outer suburbs in the 80s then. You all should have been deported and not let in the country back then as well
@freemoneyhunter: did you just compared African americans with Inmigrants from Africa to this country?
So, can I start blaming people here in australia (those descended from The UK of course) for Brexit?
@AngryChicken: > Indian cuisine however is a gift from God (capital 'G').
Maybe in India, but certainly not in Australia.
My baseball bat does not discriminate ethnicity.
Burglars, be it white, yellow, brown, black or any colour in between, will be knocked out.
And everyone picks which laws to follow. You'd be stupid to follow every law because there are some outdated laws (eg. Neck to knee bathers in Brighton beach) and many discretionary ones.
If I cannot knock a black person out, you've singled a race and vilified everyone else. That doesn't make you enlightened or politically correct (whatever that even means), it makes you a hypocrite. Perhaps, even a dumbass one.
Yeah no need to mention African gangs, even though it's African gangs committing these horrendous crimes.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-polit…
We don't have an African gang problem
It's not only African gangs committing these crimes. Pick up your local paper, mine has a neighborhood watch page which outlines all the crimes in the neighborhood. They're not African.
Ozbargain. Where you get downvoted for not being racist!
Hi MissG.
Three white guys engage in a break & enter: crime.
Three black guys engage in a break & enter: gang crime!
It's not racist to want peace and safety. It's not racist to call a criminal a criminal. It's not racist to see statistical proof of higher proportions of criminality within a given ethnic group. Inconvenient, yes. Uncomfortable too. But not racist.
Hmm, you sound like a computer programmer i once knew.
Sure he could code, but he had no idea how the world was stuck together.
You have used racial stereotypes to discredit an entire racial group, just like i did with you.
Anyway, must dash.
I always need to remind myself that if i met people like you in person i wouldn't give them a moment of my time…
Except no one denies the presence and issue of white gang crime. Qlds gang problem is bikies who are predominantly white gangs. We don't just pretend they aren't violent gangsters because they're white. We don't call them white gangs though as their racial origin while doesn't define anything about the group but their motorbike club culture does.
Also no one pretends the Yakuza, triads, mafia, Lebanese gangs don't exist or aren't an issue around the world. That's just in your head mate so that you can somehow single out that people are being mean and racist to violent African young men. It's not racist against Italians to point out the mafia are from Italy. It in no way implies that all Italians are mafiosos (unless my Italian wife has something to tell me about her family). Much in the same way that it isn't racist to call a gang of 100% young African migrants, a gang of young African migrants. A spades a spade.
Kindly get your head out of your arse.
FYI my racial origin is Cornish and Scotch. So I'm just made of white privilege I suppose.
You're implying i'm saying things that i'm not.
It's like this:
A crime is committed. Terrible, but ok so far…
Race/ethnic origin of perpetrator is disclosed. OK, things have the potential to get out of hand here, but no particular problem on its face.
Some people will then seek to tarnish the entire racial/ethnic group on the basis of the conduct of the few. OK, this is where the real problems kick in, and it's not just me, as it comes up against our racial vilification laws.
There's a lot of that third point happening in this thread. I'm not pretending anything and my head is sitting on my shoulders. Describing a small number of people involved in a crime as an ethnic crime 'gang' is one tool used to drive the vilification. That's all i'm saying…
@freakatronic: ALl you have to do to shut these leftist Utopian dreamers who take all day virtue signalling how PC they are is to post the actual statistics.. see them fold…
About 1.5% of criminal offenders in Victoria are Sudanese-born, the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) told a federal parliamentary inquiry on migrant settlement outcomes, while the Sudanese and South Sudanese communities together make up just 0.14% of the state’s total population."
You directly stated that the equivalent crime committed by whites is not called gang crime when it is for Africans. That's bullshit as I've demonstrated and is a rather ridiculous semantic argument anyway. Why on Earth do you care if a group of criminals is defined as a gang or not? It says nothing about non criminals.
"Hi MissG.
Three white guys engage in a break & enter: crime.
Three black guys engage in a break & enter: gang crime!"
So we don't call the Mafia Italian? We don't call the Yakuza Japanese? We don't call the triads Chinese? We don't acknowledge that bikies are mostly white? That Irish gangs are Irish. Do we have to pretend they aren't for leftist virtue signalling reasons?
There is a demonstrable crime problem within the Sudanese migrant community in victoria at the moment. Yes, to imply anything about the Sudanese population in general based off that is unfair and probably racist. But to pretend the stats don't exist and there isn't an issue is ludicrous.
I'm struggling to find these horribly racist posts you're referring to. Maybe I need to read more of the thread. All I see is you blowing up at a thread of people asking about wanting to defend themselves against violent crime which is a rather odd thing for you to seemingly be against. I'd love a hand with you giving me a direct quote of a post here that is tarnishing an entire population based on their race.
@freakatronic: That's not really a rational argument you're making there champ. Raving lunatics smearing themselves in faeces? I'm just tired of all the emotional panic driven chicken-littling going on over this.
If you're worried about 'home invasion' if we're going to borrow an American term, then up your security. Groups of teenagers are committing these crimes. In some suburbs they're Sudanese (Africa has over 50 countries in it by the way), in others they're Caucasian and so on. Who cares about their ethnicity? The main problem is everyone who commits these crimes are getting bailed way too easily, the judiciary (not the police), are behind the eight-ball and not coming down hard enough on them.
Your bleating about 'lefties' is simplistic and irrational.
@polk: By focusing on their ethnicity everyone misses the point. The point being Victoria is way too soft on violent crime. Not the police, the judiciary.
Used to live in Geelong not that long ago, and we had heaps of problems with local groups of caucasian teenagers stealing cars to joy ride in, home invasion, ice dealing etc. Amazingly, no one called them gangs then….
@MissG: Lefties are the ones granting bail, denying criminality, and demonising people who object to violent crime. Lefties are the ones who created a justice system centred around keeping violent criminals out of jail and making the working public bear every cost. Lefties are the ones who gave us jails that are nicer than a lot of holiday accommodation I can personally afford. Lefties are the ones who brought an army of welfare dependent former child-soldiers to the Australian suburbs in order to get Good Boy Points with the UN. You're wrong about the left. The left are the problem.
@AngryChicken:
Both scenarios are crime but the media calls one gang crime and the other omits the word gang.
They are still charged with the same criminal charges if identical scenarios are established. Ie. No gang affiliation was identified.
@freakatronic: Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back that up? Our judicial system and the way it operates goes back decades.
For the record, Australia is one of the founders of the UN, and one of the founders of the UN Refugee Convention, which successive governments, both left and right, have continued to uphold the principles of. You may be surprised to know that the Australian Labor Party was a strong defender of the White Australian Policy and and banned all non-white European immigration earlier on.
Again, getting hysterical about 'lefties' is not the solution here. Previous right wing governments have done nothing about the judiciary either and I suggest you either get a history book or at least get on Wikipedia and learn your own countries history.
There's 'not being a racist', and sweeping the problem under the carpet
Shouldn't confuse the two.
Proponents of the latter often hide under the moniker 'anti-racist'
which is as appropriate as a pedophile naming themselves a defender of children
@payton: I don't think anyone is trying to sweep this problem away, I think too many people are focused on ethnicity when it may be one ethnic group in a couple of suburbs but the problem, especially in Victoria, is widespread because of our outdated judicial system.
@siresteelhell: I wish that was all it took, but those of the left fear not truth nor statistics. They merely stick the fingers in their ears and sing "Kumbaya" to drown out those of a different opinion.
@AngryChicken: Wait until 'the rape game' comes to Australia, affects someone you're related to, and we'll see if you feel the same.
But to ignore a statistic that shows there is an issue with one group of people mroe than other misses the point of trying to "prevent"it… If for instance, there was 22 year olds committing every robbery and all the other ages had 20% less offenders there would be something that could be causing it…Sentencing is a reactive thing… working out the root cause is where it needs to be..I agree the judges are not sentencing hard enough, you only have to look at that dude who kicked the cop in the face at highpoint in victoria and got bail, who by the way was Sudan or a recent Sudan descendant…
It has been a long time coming that the media up until now has shy`d away from saying that there is a commonality among these offenders. Same as when there is a terrorist act and they are slow to say it was an Islamist…It is a start, it is about time worked out why these people come here and have no care for our laws…
ps..did u see that person smiling as he kicked the face of the cop on the video?, he knew he was going to get away with it
@siresteelhell: Not ignoring the statistic, it's true that in a couple of suburbs, Sudanese youth is overrepresented in violent crime. But I think too many people are attributing that root cause to Sudanese migration in general which is incorrect, it is a subset of their community - mainly teenage boys, but not all of their teenage boys. It's a complex problem. It was a lack of preparedness on immigrations part, a lack of appropriate transition into our community, these kids fathers returning to Sudan to fight in the war, and our judiciary system which was never equipped for this problem.
In other suburbs there are gangs of white boys doing the same things with the same level of disrespect - but it just doesn't achieve the same level of panic in the media, nor does it provide the same political opportunity.
And watching Dutton capitalise on this is just crazy - in the words of Murdoch 'keep em scared, keep em stupid', and this is exactly what's happening in our mainstream media.
Of course all races commit crime, but they are over represented in the crime stats based on their proportion of the population. 10x more likely to commit crime and 200x more likely to commit a violent home invasion.
It's not racism, it's facts.
@OzzyOzbourne: To quote the leader of the Victorian opposition (right-wing by the way) "…there is a crime problem in Victoria that is unique, that is considerable, and that the state government's doing nothing about," Mr Guy added. "It's not about African gangs, it's about gangs full stop."
So if you want to focus on the overrepresentation of an ethnicity in a very small area in a very small group of people, that's up to you. You only have to look at all the behaviour in youth detention facilities over the last year to realise there is a far wider issue here. People seem to be ignoring this clearly because it's far more satisfying to run with the mainstream media and stick the boot into what they have made the most visible. And if you are going to focus on that very small group, then it's up to you to educate yourself on why this group has those numbers, and to find out what is being done about it. Especially when many of this group are Australian citizens, so focusing on their ethnicity is somewhat moot, insofar as the punishment should be the same as for any other citizen. The root causes are different though and I do agree they need to be focused on.
Also, it's not a race committing a crime. It's specifically teenage boys from a single region in a single country which has been absolutely torn apart by war. Make of that what you will.
Link to the article quoting Mr Guy: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/teen-gang-deportation-plan…
@siresteelhell:
"About 1.5% of criminal offenders in Victoria are Sudanese-born, the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) told a federal parliamentary inquiry on migrant settlement outcomes, while the Sudanese and South Sudanese communities together make up just 0.14% of the state’s total population."
Right so there are roughly 180 criminal offenders who are Sudanese-born, out of a population of roughly 8000 Sudanese, out of a population of 5.8 million .
Please explain to me first, who these leftist Utopian dreamers actually are, when both sides left and right are screaming for a better justice system, and secondly, how, wherever these imaginary people might be, they are going to 'fold' upon learning that out of a population of almost 6 million people, 180 of those people are Sudanese-born criminal offenders.
And just to make a further point, I pulled the Victorian offender statistics from the Corrections Victoria website for the month of November. In Victoria, there was a total of 15,056 offenders. So you're telling me, that out of 15,000 people, we should be focusing on 180 of them?
More interestingly is the male:female ratio - of those offenders 12,272 were male, and 2784 were female. But that's the real elephant in the room isn't it?
Source: http://www.corrections.vic.gov.au/utility/publications+manua…
@MissG: I should also add that the total number of offenders under the age of 25 was 2311, so again, the whole 5% of Sudanese youth as opposed to the 95% of other youth offenders isn't going to fold a piece of paper let alone your 'leftist Utopian dreamers'.
Problem is, most of the time many of these youths claim to be in the gangs even though the gang (Apex in particular) is an "anyone can be in it" loosely knit collective. They join each other to commit crimes without ever meeting each other. "We are Apex gang do what we say or we will be back!"
Throw mud and hopes it sticks is your tatic?..Easy enough to crap on about how it is a low number overall, the percentage of them compared to how many are here that are likely to commit is through the roof , their crimes are always blatant, in your face… I live in one of these areas where there is a real problem with this one subset of the community. Not sure if you have any problems in your area, but more and more areas are seeing this happen. The servo up the road was just robbed with machetes, not so nice…
Bla bla bla, other people are bad…nah, it needs to be looked at. I am sure the good migrants (the majority) would love for mainstream to see them as being a good people who are welcomed into the area. Just ignoring there is a problem is a problem in itself. I am glad the media and government is finally taking another look at what is happening.
@siresteelhell: No one is ignoring the problem, I'm seeing it as part of a much much bigger problem. In my neighborhood there was a smash and grab around the corner with machetes, multiple cars broken into, people threatened etc, but, I suppose, much less interesting when it's part of the 12,000 rather than the 180. You suburb is not the only one with violent crime, you just have a group of offenders who happen to be from a different part of the world. No one is ignoring that Victoria has a massive problem with violent crime and if the unique thing about these particular offences is that they are more blatant, well that's even more indicative of the problem with the judiciary. I can't believe that kid who kicked the cop in the head got bail either - completely ridiculous, but I'm not going to go around bleating about leftist Utopian dreamers ignoring the problem when everyone, left and right, can see that we have a big big problem in this state. And frankly if these kids are what it takes to wake everyone up to the seriousness of violent crime simply because they happen to be from somewhere different, then so be it. But to pretend like this is a new problem…well it's not that at all.
Come on OzzyOzBourne, out with it.
What is your racial and ethnic origin?
Why aren't you answering the question?
What do you fear?
What is your problem?
People who racially vilify others, that's my problem.
Can you list your problems, or do i need to do it for you?
@AngryChicken
Back at you, I'm asian as you can tell from my username.
What is your racial and ethnic origin?
Why aren't you answering the question?
@AngryChicken: lol… you are angry about something.
Stating a fact does not make someone a racist. Stating something about a minority group that is a fact, is not vilification. It’s just facts.
Tired of people getting all offended when the race of the offenders is mentioned. It’s just facts. What should the police and media do?
Don’t mention their gender, as that is oppressive.
Don’t mention their skin colour, as that’s racist.
Don’t mention their race, that’s vilification.
Don’t mention their age, as that’s discrimination.
Don’t mention gangs, as that’s stereotyping…
Just how do the news outlets and police describe the situation without upsetting all the fragile people in the community? How would your soft, political correct headlines describe “black Sundanese teenagers working in organised gangs, breaking into people’s houses to rob and assault them.”
And before you ask, I’m a white, middle aged Australian male with no religious views. So I guess that makes me a misogynistic racist bigot by default? (Please stereotype me…)
Can we do like in game of thrones? Especially with the nail pliers etc
Yeah man just say they came in with that weapon and you disarmed them haha that's my plan
Don't forget to plant their fingerprints on the weapon.
Be certain to wipe your prints from that weapon first then pop their prints on it. ;)
Actually, don't worry I have found the answer. Google is my friend now.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/03/28/defend-home-intr…
"University of Adelaide law lecturer Kellie Toole said the question of defending one's home was not straightforward." I imagine it would BECOME straightforward if it was someone skulking towards Kellie Toole's daughter's bedroom.
They appear to be happy to open it themselves.
I'm not usually home. I'm at a restaurants.
Seems there is a bunch of people here with no sense of humour, or perspective. As horrendous as this is it is a very small percentage of the population who are either victims or perpetrators. The Herald Sun is dog whistling for the LNP. I have no issue with the perps being subject to the full force of the law but scaring people for very little reason and vilifying an entire group of immigrants on the basis of a few thugs is disgusting. Personally I'm happy the little toad that kicked the policeman is back behind bars; the courts do need to deal more harshly with the thuggish element. However, I am quite happy to go out to restaurants at the moment and if Peter Dutton is too scared then I can personally hold his hand to make him feel better.
I have a firearm and all the members in my house know how to use it. Anyone who comes into the house and threatens us will most likely be shot and killed.
Parents grew up in a farm, so owning a weapon is no biggie. Only difference now is we live in a big city. Yes, I know we'll probably be charged with manslaughter but I will always claim self-defence.
Unfortunately if you are to be compliant with Australia's firearms legislation then it will take a number of seconds to unlock a trigger guard or safe then retrieve ammunition and then load the firearm.
We're not always compliant. Especially at night.
Username checks out…
Great, until one of your kids has a mental breakdown or someone breaks in and takes your firearms when you aren't home. The studies show that having a gun in the home is much more likely to lead to violence or suicide within the home than protecting yourself from outsiders. If you don't believe it have a look at the suicide rate for rural areas.
http://ruralhealth.org.au/sites/default/files/fact-sheets/fa…
BTW - my other half had first hand experience of this with his father.
@smuggler
Not something you want to admit if you're going to kill someone.
You are allowed to defend yourself and your family if they are being threatened.
You cannot just hit someone with a bat as they enter your property unless they are a real threat to yourself or family.
If you do happen to knock someone who is entering your property out cold with a bat, make sure you place a weapon on them.
There is no need to include ethnicity in this discussion unless you wish to be accused of singling out races.