Kim McCosker’s family unwillingly became part of the police statistics at 3.30am on August 9, 2021, as victims of the youth crime scourge plaguing South-East Queensland.
Almost two years on, the still-devastated author, entrepreneur and cooking celebrity, her husband Glen Turnbull and their children look at the world a little differently.
Six youths smashed their way into the family’s Pelican Waters home and stole three cars that fateful morning, at the height of the pandemic.
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“I remember everything because it was such an invasion of privacy,” Kim said of the family’s second robbery in 15 years at the canalfront home.
“I remember it with clarity more when I see the video footage and I see them scaling our fence with a big knife.
“I just remember thinking: ‘Thank God we’re all safe. It doesn’t matter. It’s insured. It’s fine. We are all safe.’
“As the week wore on, we knew in a very short period of time who some of the offenders were because they were posting it publicly on their social media platforms.”
The youths grabbed Kim’s handbag, which contained keys to two of the cars, and stole her prized Mini Countryman, emblazoned with her highly recognisable 4 Ingredients branding, along with Glen’s new Range Rover and son Morgan’s pride-and-joy Toyota Supra, which was hotwired.
“My car got as far as Wurtulla and police followed it down a one-way street,” Kim said.
“They played chicken and just rammed the police car. My car jack-knifed up over the sidewalk, straight into a tree. He (the youth driver) took off on foot. So, my car was written off within an hour.
“Within 24 hours, my husband’s car was part of a robbery in Mount Cotton. They rammed a sidewalk and blew two tyres. They took off on foot and unfortunately had the car key in their pocket.
“And of course, for insurance, you have to have all of that (automatic garage door) reconfigured and sent from England through COVID when everything was taking so long.
“That car sat compounded for 10 weeks.
“My son’s car was found five days later. They’d attempted to torch it in a field on the Kilcoy-Beerwah Road. That was eight weeks being panel-beated and fixed. Thank God we got that one back. It’s just a real disruption (to life).
“Imagine if someone did that to their family? The invasion, the inconvenience. (Those youths) would have no idea.
“There should be consequences for people’s actions but I just don’t feel that the current youth justice system has those consequences.
“There’s that 10 per cent that knows the system so well, knows that there won’t be any consequences and continues to reoffend.”
Of the six who broke into the home, three teenage boys were arrested and charged with multiple offences.
Kim wishes both she and Glen could have been in the Children’s Court to face the offenders, because “it’s always harder being called out, looked in the eye and asked to explain”.
The ordeal prompted her to call on the Queensland Government to put a halt to fearless juvenile criminals holding the state to ransom over senseless crimes.
“They’re not doing it to profit from it,” Kim said of the state’s young crims.
“They’re not on-selling (cars and property). They’re not breaking it down. They’re either destroying it, burning it or abandoning it. It’s really just for social media infamy.”
Kim said she empathised with police officers whose work seemed thwarted by ‘the system’ that allowed 10 per cent of hardcore youth offenders to commit 50 per cent of the crimes.
“The same people are committing the same crimes, so police spend 50 per cent of their working hours investigating, chasing, interviewing, prosecuting, getting a result and then bang! (The youth) are on the street 48 hours later doing exactly the same thing,” she said.
“Police officers have to do this week in and week out. I don’t know how they keep their strength up, physically or mentally.”
Kim organised public forums in December 2021 and February 2022 to arm Caloundra residents with knowledge of crime rates and to lobby for more police.
But she remains frustrated at what she sees as a ‘broken’ youth justice system that continues to put repeat offenders back on the streets to commit more crimes.
And she is baffled by a Save The Children report this week naming Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory as the worst offenders when it comes to violating the rights of children in youth justice facilities and advocating all states raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 14.
She said the current juvenile justice system seemed to tell children as young as 12 and 13 that there are few consequences for their criminal actions.
“We grew up with the saying ‘if you’re old enough to commit the crime, you’re old enough to do the time’, ‘do unto others as you want done unto yourself’ and ‘if you have nothing nice to say or do, don’t say or do anything’. It was such a simple time but those messages still resonate with me,” she said.
“When I was young, no one wanted to do a crime and have to work on a farm in excruciating Queensland heat, digging holes for big powerlines, or putting fences up miles after miles on these big properties. That was the old Boystown concept. I’m not sure whatever happened to it.
“Where are the deterrents these days? This is why this 10 per cent of kids just get away time after time.
“We’ve got to at least reduce that number.
“It’s not effective, the system that we have. A whole new system is needed and I appreciate that is not an easy task.”
While Kim and the family have since moved from their beloved Pelican Waters street to a high-rise apartment, they are grateful that developer Henzells funded a vehicle numberplate-recognition camera on Pelican Waters Boulevard and that Member for Caloundra Jason Hunt organised a similar installation on Caloundra Road to deter criminals coming in from the highway and making easy getaways without detection.
Kim agrees with the LNP that Caloundra, which also takes in the burgeoning Aura development in the south, simply has too few police officers to cope with the increase in crime.
In a media statement on April 20, Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Kawana MP Jarrod Bleijie accused the Palaszczuk Labor Government of misleading Queenslanders on the number of frontline police patrolling our streets.
A briefing document prepared for Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, released under Right to Information, reveals that in eight years under the current government, police on the Sunshine Coast have been reduced by 10 – from 561 in 2015 to 551 in 2022.
Mr Bleijie said the document exposed the “dire policing situation in the region” and went against Police Minister Mark Ryan’s recent comment to local media that “there are more police on the Sunshine Coast than ever before”.
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“The crisis and chaos engulfing the Palaszczuk Labor Government is now impacting the safety of Sunshine Coast families,” Mr Bleijie said.
“We are in the middle of a crime crisis and Labor’s solution has been to cut police on the beat.
“Sunshine Coast locals deserve better.”
But Police Minister Mark Ryan stands by an increase in police strength in the region.
“Queensland Police Services advises that the approved police strength in the Sunshine Coast Police District has increased from 529 positions on 1 March, 2015, to 566 positions as at 31 March, 2023,” he told Sunshine Coast News.
“The government is making the biggest investment in policing in more than three decades to deliver more than 2000 extra police personnel.
“The allocation of personnel and resources is strictly a matter for the Police Commissioner and her senior officers.
“The Police Commissioner has stated that this historic investment in policing will deliver a minimum of 150 extra police officers to each police region, including the North Coast Region.
“Ten of North Coast Region’s growth positions have been allocated to Caloundra Division since July 2021.
“In relation to the new Caloundra South police facility, police advise that design and due-diligence work is progressing, with construction to commence shortly after the developer transfers the land to the QPS, following construction of the Bells Creek Arterial Road being completed.”
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