Each year, the 29th September holds a special significance for Police throughout Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Solomon Islands. It is a day for police to pause to honour officers whose lives have been cut short while performing their duty as a police officer. This important day is also a time to remember police officers who have lost their lives through illness or other circumstances.
Please note that National Police Remembrance Day is traditionally observed on 29 September. As 29 September 2013 falls on a weekend, National Police Remembrance Day and all related services will be held on Friday, 27 September 2013.
National Police Remembrance Day is observed on the feast day for Saint Michael the Archangel, patron saint of police. St Michael is recognised as an archangel by the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths.
National Police Remembrance Day was first held on 29 September 1989, as a result of a joint decision at the 1988 Australasia and South West Pacific Region Commissioner’s Conference.
National Child Protection Week is a national campaign held annually throughout Australia to raise awareness of child abuse prevention.
The objectives of the week are to raise the profile of all issues connected with child protection, including child abuse prevention, treatment, research, education, service provision and support for children, young people and families.
National Child Protection Week also aims to create an Australia-wide umbrella focus for child protection, allowing government and non-government agencies to present a cooperative and coordinated community oriented campaign.
When a child is abused, the physical and mental pain can last a lifetime. Sadly, according to the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN) more than 30,000 Australian children are abused or neglected every year.
Victims of child abuse have an increased risk of depression and suicide, substance addiction, poor educational outcomes and antisocial or criminal behaviour.
This is National Missing Persons Week. Why do people go missing? – reasons could include abduction, murder, domestic violence, misadventure, miscommunication, mental illness and of course dementia-related illnesses.
People with a mental illness are more at risk of going missing. Do you know what signs to look out for?
National Missing Persons Week | 28 July – 3 August 2013
Complete the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce Survey
The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce (ACFT) includes 22 government regulatory agencies and departments in Australia and New Zealand that work alongside private sector, community and non-government partners to prevent fraud. The ACFT has conducted arange of fraud prevention and awareness-raising activities since 2006. The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) is a member of the Taskforce and chair of the research subgroup.
One key activity of the AIC, on behalf of the Taskforce, is to host an annual consumer fraud survey to obtain a snapshot of the public’s exposure to consumer scams and fraud, collect and analyse this information to improve the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of scams.
If you would like to report a scam, discuss your participation or speak to someone about your experiences, the please call the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s SCAMwatch hotline on 1300 795 995 (for TTY services call 1300 303 609) or visit www.scamwatch.gov.au
Consumer fraud
Consumer scams are crimes of dishonesty such as forgery, counterfeiting, on-line deception, and theft that are targeted at people who seek to purchase goods and services. Potential victims can be those who use computers and the Internet, older people, those who use professional advisers, and people who use mobile phones. Often individuals suffer financial loss, although banks and companies also suffer financially where they lose business or are required to compensate people who have lost money.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2012: np) defined a scam as “a fraudulent invitation, request notification or offer designed to obtain someone’s personal information or money or otherwise obtain a financial benefit by deceptive means”. While the terms fraud and scam are often used interchangeably, scams are generally considered to be a fraud category, with fraud referring to matters involving dishonesty and deception (Hutchings & Lindley 2012). There are a range of consumer fraud activities that may be classified as scams.
Extent of consumer fraud in Australia
Although estimates have been made of the total cost of fraud and also identity-related fraud, wesimply do not know how many consumers are victimized through scams and how much money they have lost. Many consumers also don’t report their experiences to the police or authorities, which make calculations based on official crime statistics even less reliable.
The ABS (2012) estimated that a total of 1.2 million Australians aged 15 years and over were a victim of at least one incident of personal fraud in the 12 months prior to interview in 2010-11. This equates to a national victimisation rate for personal fraud of 6.7% of the population aged 15 years and over. This is an increase from the 806,000 victims of personal fraud in 2007 (5.0%). Australians lost $1.4 billion in 2010-11 due to personal fraud. Three in five victims of personal fraud (60% or 713,600 persons) lost money, an average of $2,000 per victim who incurred a financial loss (ABS 2012).
In 2011 the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) received 83,150 scam-related contacts from consumers and small businesses in Australia, which was over double the amount received from the 2010 period (ACCC 2012). Scam losses reported to the ACCC totaled over $85 million, with the ACCC noting that the actual losses were probably a lot higher as many scams go unreported or people may have reported victimisation to other agencies (ACCC 2012).
Results from the 2011 ACFT survey found that 94% of participants had received at least one scam in the previous 12 months, and of those that had received a scam invitation the most common type of scam received were lottery scams, however although dating and social networking scams were the least common scam invitations received they were the scam type to most likely to result in a financial loss (Hutchings & Lindley 2012).
Graffiti is a significant issue within many local government areas reducing the value and image of our communities & neighbourhoods. The VandalTrak system aims to log, track and manage Graffiti incidents in one place.
It’s your community. Report graffiti vandalism with VandalTrak, so together we can assist authorities to bring those responsible to justice.
Vandaltrak allows community members to report graffiti simply via their website or their mobile apps for Android or Apple devices.
Congratulations on the mile stone Vandaltrak. Here’s looking forward to another 10,000 incident reports.
