Alice Springs curfew reinstated for all residents from 10pm 08:44

A curfew has been reimposed in Alice Springs, effective 10pm tonight. Now, this is a result of numerous examples of severe and what looks like indiscriminate violence that's been occurring across the weekend. So police officers have been seriously injured in some of these attacks.

including a police officer being run over. Here's Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy. On Friday afternoon, we saw a police officer who was conducting his duties, run over by a vehicle, suffering a fracture to his leg and his arm. He's in hospital still and he'll take some time to recover. I thank him for his service. He's maintaining a positive mindset and thank you for your duty.

On Saturday evening, we saw a large-scale disturbance involving up to 80 people on the council lawns in Alice Springs. They'd been at two licensed premises earlier in that night and had exited the licensed premises and went across the road into the council lawns and engaged in disturbances and violent conduct.

causing our police to respond. They assaulted our police. Our police had to use some force to disperse the crowd. They eventually did and wandered into the Todd River of Alice Springs. That subsequently led to the assault of four off-duty police who were walking home along Stock Terrace. We cannot identify that they were known to the group as police. However, it could have been any Alice Springs resident or Territorian that could have been violently assaulted and robbed.

On Sunday at lunchtime, we saw an attack at an event on the town council lawns where a 42-year-old woman was stabbed with a knife and she was subsequently hospitalised and we've arrested her cousin who's now facing a charge of recklessly endangering life. Last night, we saw three youth in a stolen motor vehicle conduct a robbery at a service station and then terrorise motorists around the CBD in Alice Springs.

Cumulatively, those harms aren't acceptable. So that's Michael Murphy, the police commissioner in the NT. Reckon there's enough going on? You've got to remember too, Alice Springs only has a population of 25,000 and in 72 hours, they had that volume of crime.

So as a result of all that, under new laws that were introduced in May, the police commissioner has the power to declare effectively what is a 72 hour lockdown. So from 10 p.m. tonight, curfew has been imposed for three nights. Darren Clark, Alice Springs local. And of course, you would have heard him with my colleague Ben Fordham on breakfast. But he's on the line with us. Darren, g'day.

G'day, mate. How are you? I'm all right, mate. Your reaction to that? Look, it's very reactive policing once again up here. You know, we've had the curfew before.

which worked. It actually worked. And the place has been very, very good up until the weekend. Now, we had the Alice Springs show in here this weekend. Now, that's always notorious for trouble in this town, always. So instead of preventing things, so now they've let this roll out and now we'll have this knee-jerk reaction today with a curfew, which affects everyone. So everyone in this town,

cannot go into the CBD between 10pm and 6am in the morning without a legitimate reason. So then if there is a disturbance in the CBD, they can restrain you and hold you in an area for your own safety. Look, mate, they've had enough time to work on some things here.

They haven't done anything. Now, the instance on Friday where a police officer went to apprehend a person that was three and a half times over the legal limit trying to drive off from a walk-in bottle shop and then he was dragged along and his hand's been injured, his foot's been run over, that was on Friday. Now, yesterday morning I heard about...

the four off duties. I've got some tip-offs from my Action for Alice 2020 Facebook page where I report crime. So I went to the police media and said, right, you guys have got a little bit of time here. You need to get this up because this is a serious incident. They weren't going to do that till today. They were not going to report that today. Then I asked about the Friday incident.

They weren't going to report that till today either. So these guys, what happens up here, mate? What happens up here? They try and cover it all up and not let things out. We've got an election coming up here in eight weeks, seven or eight weeks. So everything's got to be suppressed. And this goes on all the time. But here we go again. So what?

If you had the curfew, the curfew worked so well. And through your own words, you said that things have gotten a hell of a lot better than they were, say, at the start of the year when this was a national issue. What has occurred outside of the Alice Spring show in the last sort of 72 hours to dip you back into curfew? Well, the users have come in from remote communities and they've just absolutely run amok, you know. They were driving around last night. You know, I first put up a post about...

the stolen car going around with the three U's, and then an hour and a half later, it's at a service station driving around, kids hanging out with the crowbar. Like, so what happens when we have a stolen car in the CBD up here? The police retreat because they don't want an injury to a youth in a vehicle. So they retreat. But then the public's left to fend for themselves. Sorry, Darren, to interrupt. So what is a...

What's going to happen here? Are we just going to have a situation where Alice Springs, every time there's a little spike in violence, you just end up going into rolling lockdowns? Well, they've set the precedent now, haven't they? Yeah, they have. Look, this is the trouble, mate.

And you'll hear it from someone like Jacinta Price and you'll hear it repeatedly from her. And we keep saying it up here. You have to treat the underlying issues with this problem. You cannot keep putting band-aids over this problem because guess what, mate? In another two months when the weather warms right up here, it'll take off again and we'll be back to where we were last summer and the summer before. And that happens every year. So no one actually wants to make the hard decisions

No one wants to go and help Indigenous people in remote communities and create employment, get kids to school, get them in a safe home, get them in a safe environment and give them a future. Nobody wants to go there, mate. Nobody wants to go there. It's just too hard. So all we'll do is we'll keep having these little band-aids. We'll make a political statement. Oh, we've done something. We've done a curfew. Yeah, OK. OK.

Yeah, we think they're trying to keep us safe. But the curfew, the curfew areas that they've announced does not even include where the police officers were attacked Saturday night. Sure. Does not include where the police officers were run over on Friday. So it's kind of people are going, well, you're not even including those areas. Yeah.

But what happens also, mate, they'll push a lot of the crime. If there's any crime, it'll come out to the suburbs now. And that's what happened last curfew. It cleaned the CBD up and you won't see a human being in the CBD at two or three o'clock in the morning during the week. And that's been like that since the last curfew. Well, Darren, make sure you keep on top of it and please keep the country abreast of what's going on in Alice Springs because...

I certainly care, and I think most Australians care about what is occurring in Alice Springs. So please, you're our eyes and ears, and let us know how this curfew goes for the next 72 hours, and I'm sorry that everybody who lives in that beautiful, beautiful town is now subjected to it. All the best.

Good on you, mate. And thanks to 2GB for helping the people of Alice Springs out, mate. You're very welcome. Keep going, Darren. That's Darren Clark. He's a local in Alice Springs and the founder of Action for Alice 2020. 131873. Imagine that. This is what's going to happen, isn't it? Every time there's a spike, like Darren said, it'll come around for summer and there'll be more violence. And here's another curfew.

And then it'll go away for a couple of months and then there'll be a spike in violence. And here's another curfew. Surely that is not the way forward. It's a fine band-aid if and when it needs to be applied, but that is not going to solve the fundamental and structural issues that are occurring in that town. What do you make of it?