THE Western Region's top cop says he is concerned with the troubling trend of teenagers "posting and boasting" their confrontations with locals while armed with weapons during break-ins.
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Western Region Assistant Commissioner Andrew Holland told ACM police intelligence showed teenagers were looking for altercations when they were targeting homes.
Just this week, police released security footage of locals who they believe could be connected to a violent home invasion in Amaroo Drive in Moree where a man's nose was broken and the female occupant terrified after they were woken and confronted by intruders on February 14.
Then the breakthrough police needed came after officers moved on a teenage boy and a 19-year-old woman.
Police across western and northern NSW have made several inroads in recent weeks and months, with several juveniles and well-known suspects behind bars or in juvenile custody on break-in, property theft or stealing car offences, among others.
Assistant Commissioner Holland confirmed "there has been a lull in Western Region" in offending in February, but there were isolated incidents and "it can quite easily jump again tomorrow", depending on "who's in custody, who's out of custody and all that stuff".
He said serious crime "is a concern", especially the "competition about who can be the most offensive", which had been a trend with teenagers joyriding and "posting and boasting" on social media sites like Snapchat.
"To me, they're not smart criminals because smart criminals don't film themselves," he said.
Gone are the days of stealing cars by hot-wiring, nowadays you can't take a car without keys.
Assistant Commissioner Holland pointed to police intelligence and trends in metropolitan areas, which show juveniles tend "to break into the houses, sneak around and steal the keys to get the high-performance cars".
"Unfortunately, our juveniles in the Western Region, and the Northern Region as well, seem to break into houses and want to confront the residents with weapons, and then obviously again, film this in the process to gain that notoriety, to gain that one-upmanship on the other offenders," he said.
In March, a teenager in Moree became one of the first to be sentenced under 'post and boast' laws after filming himself joyriding with friends in multiple stolen cars through the town at high speed. The cars had been stolen after the teenager admitted his group targeted motels for "better cars" and the victims were usually from out of town.
The children's court magistrate, Paul Hayes, said the conduct needed to be deterred because it could encourage others to do the same thing.
"Posting and boasting glorifies crime," Mr Hayes said in sentencing.
'Young people want notoriety'
Assistant Commissioner Holland said Operation Mongoose - which saw 155 juveniles charges with 3267 charges between September 2023 and the end of February - and now Operation Soteria, which launched in March, was aiming to "prevent them from following the life of crime".
"The young people want notoriety, and they're getting notoriety by posting these images and what they're doing on social media," he said.
"There seems to be competition for these young offenders trying to outdo each other by carrying weapons, by carrying bigger weapons, you know, by making it more violent.
"It just shows the immaturity that they feel the need to, obviously film themselves to do this to, you know, show how tough they are."
Operation Soteria police have taken charge of investigating juvenile crime and much of the aggravated break-and-enters across the region, but Operation Mongoose has been working to stem the flow of offending.
"It's been highly successful in identifying, arresting and preventing and diverting some, so whilst we want to catch the ringleaders, we also want to make sure that we can divert the, you know, the peripheral offenders. The young people are just coming into crime. We want to make sure that we can put them in diversion programs," Assistant Commissioner Holland said.
"We want to make sure that we can prevent them from, you know, following the life of crime and that's probably the biggest thing about social media that hurts us the most is that the young people want notoriety and they're getting notoriety by posting this these images and what they're doing on social media."
Operation Soteria will run for three months before it is reviewed by NSW Police.
