Neighborhood Watch

About this time of year, two years ago, a man who was going through a similar, equally unjust time in his life was organizing a Neighborhood Watch. He and I traded stories, then he asked if I'd like to join. I said Yes. I had been an organizer of Neighborhood Watch in the US.
The same guy had organized a program to refurbish bikes from the tip, outfit them with safety devices and even helmets, for the kids who couldn't afford bikes themselves.

It took nearly two years, but someone dropped by a form for me to sign about a month ago. It was for a police check. I really didn't think anything of it.

A couple of days ago, I got my answer.
It seems that because I had had "involvements" with police, I am not fit to be a member of the Neighborhood Watch. That's simply disgusting. In the whole of 50 years, I have had less than a handful of traffic tickets, and no charges -- until facing the prejudice of the Intervention Order process.
There are few people better suited to be a part of a Neighborhood Watch in this area. I don't do drugs. I don't even drink. I'm familiar with the neighborhood and the neighbors. Yet Sen Con Sharron Coburn deems me unsuitable because of "involvements with the police."
Just another insult from a perverse, irrational system.

Update, two days after the original post

(Sunday, 1 Oct 2006)
I realized while watching the sky at the beach yesterday why the guy who originally contacted me was no longer organizing the Neighborhood Watch: He would have had "involvements" with the police, too.
Neighborhood Watch had been talked about around this area since I moved here over 5 years ago. This guy was the first one to do the work to organize it. His community spirit and energy were as obvious as his gentle spirit, if you looked, despite his nervous, energetic demeanor -- and accent.

This morning I sent an email to the Sen Constable. It was probably a foolish and wasted move. She'd already made her decisions. Sometimes you have to wonder if the police realize they spend half their on-street time chasing men who are not criminals in the make-criminal furor called "domestic violence."

Here is the email I sent this morning. It was returned. The Sen Constable apparently has blocked my address.

I can summarize my police involvement in one incident that is in the police call records.

After receiving the Intervention Orders against me, I looked into them on the Net and with calls to local community legal services.
Frankly, the standard paragraph in the Orders disgusted me. I was not guilty of any of those things.

One morning, I confronted my former partner and questioned her aggessively about what she was doing. Her response to every question was "I was told by my attorney not to discuss the Intervention Orders."
Further disgusted, I called the Frankston Police to report that I was in breach of the Intervention Orders. Although my questions were pointed and fair, the Orders seemed to forbid me to pose them. I told the officer that he should probably send a car around to enforce the orders.
The officer said the didn't understand. I said my partner has lied under oath in order to force me out of our jointly-owned home on the instructions of her lawyer.
The officer said he had to talk to one of the complainants, so I handed the phone to my ex.
She told him that police attendance was not necessary, that no one was in danger.

She was right. No one had ever been in any danger in that house. In fact, the abuse had been done to me by her daughter and herself. I imagine she was afraid the officer might realize that.

I believe in the course of the next couple of months, I made another similar call with the same results.

If you check your records, you'll find these were the only calls (as far as I know) made from that house to request police attendance. Her goal, with her daughter and other family members conspiring, was simply to abuse the protections provided by Intervention Orders to extort a more advantageous settlement. Considering the amounts involved, really her purpose was to continue her abuse of me.

My ex had told me months before she had found a way to have me removed from the house, even though she agreed at the time there were no grounds.

If the purpose of Intervention Orders is to protect people and allow them to work out their difficulties in a civil manner, then the Orders she and her daughter filed served no purpose. The settlement agreement had been worked out months before either of them filed Intervention Orders, in writing.
In this case, the people who filed the Intervention Orders were the abusers. They had increasingly abused me over a two year period when I was increasingly disabled and nearly invalided.
The Intervention Orders were filed when I was recovering from major surgery.

Thinking about this email, I realize it will not make any difference. You're not going to change your mind about my involvement and the Neighborhood Watch. Maybe I'm just taking the opportunity to try again to get someone to listen. It is truly sad that I now have a police record of some kind.

I was told once at CentreLink that I have rights. I found myself blurting out that I did not. If there was nowhere to go to enforce those rights, then they did not exist.
In those two sentences is really the synopsis of my "involvements" with the police.

Thank you for your time,

You can't help but wonder how these people are trained. How do you train the police to not investigate before making a case for prosectution? Does it just save time for the officers to guess who's guilty, then make a case based on imagination?
I suppose my complaints about being turned down for Neighborhood Watch will make me rise in the police watch list.
Do these people realize that they are making it a crime in Victoria to be a disabled man? Or to just be male?

Make-criminal program

This is a make-criminal program. Chasing innocent people trying to make them into criminals is much safer and produces more impressive statistics than actually investigating those committing real crimes.