{"id":177356,"date":"2025-09-29T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/177356\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T11:00:11","slug":"youth-advocate-calls-for-balance-amid-knife-crackdown-police-conduct-1600-searches-at-burnside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/177356\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth advocate calls for balance amid knife crackdown, police conduct 1,600 searches at Burnside"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">SA Police conducted more than 1,600 metal detector searches at Burnside Village at the weekend, but the state&#8217;s Guardian for Children and Young People says officials need to &#8220;get the balance right&#8221; amid a crackdown on knife crime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">On Friday, SA Police announced Declared Public Precincts at eight shopping centres in metropolitan Adelaide, including <a class=\"Link_link__kR0xA Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2025-09-26\/sa-declared-public-precincts\/105820216\" data-component=\"Link\" data-uri=\"coremedia:\/\/article\/105820216\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Burnside Village and Arndale Shopping Centre<\/a>, which allow officers to search people and remove them from the site.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The announcement followed laws passed earlier this year which allow police to declare public precincts to tackle crime.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A woman with a serious expression stands in front of posters on a wall\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bffc99d38e31d258020c1cea37d6ffca\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">Ms Reid said authorities need to get the balance right between community safety and supporting children.\u00a0 (ABC News: Marco Catalano)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Guardian for Children and Young People Shona Reid said it was important to question why children were carrying knives in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;I think it&#8217;s really important that we get the balance right between community safety and supporting our children who feel that they need to carry knives whether it&#8217;s for their own protection,&#8221; she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If we don&#8217;t understand why children are feeling they need to carry weapons then we might have a little bit of a problem, we need to sit back and ask a few questions in our community.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Ms Reid also said she worried that the creation of the new laws might result in &#8220;unintentionally&#8230; creating a pathway to a youth detention centre that we don&#8217;t want to do&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;We need to invest in our children and not necessarily look at disciplining them for every decision or risk-taking activity that they have,&#8221; she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;We&#8217;re a community, these are children and we should work together to be able to support them so they can make better decisions about how they interact with the community.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Calls for education on new laws<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Ms Reid said it was important to ensure that &#8220;appropriate education&#8221; was provided to children about the new laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;I look forward to seeing the government&#8217;s strategy around how they communicate these new laws not just to the grown-ups and to the law enforcers, but also to the children who may be impacted by these new pieces of legislation,&#8221; she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More than 1,600 searches at Burnside<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">SA Police said it conducted 1,692 metal detector searches at Burnside Village.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">On Friday, police allegedly seized a knife from a 15-year-old boy during an operation at Marion Shopping Centre.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Police allegedly seized knives from a 17-year-old boy, a 25-year-old man and a 43-year-old man during the operation at Burnside Village.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Small blade on a rope\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/8996d066b89f24ea4911f665796dcf29\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">A knife was seized from a woman after she allegedly threatened a security guard with it at Arndale Shopping Centre.\u00a0 (Supplied: SA Police)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">A 31-year-old woman was charged after allegedly threatening a security guard with a knife on Sunday at Arndale Shopping Centre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">SA Police has previously said it was considering other potential sites to be Declared Public Precincts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SA Police conducted more than 1,600 metal detector searches at Burnside Village at the weekend, but the state&#8217;s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3443,114776,114775,48,111187,114778,43,114777,44,1158,6082,4206,111190,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-177356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-adelaide","9":"tag-burnside","10":"tag-burnside-village","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-declared-public-precinct","13":"tag-ferryden-park","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-kilburn","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-police","18":"tag-port-adelaide","19":"tag-security","20":"tag-shopping-centres","21":"tag-top-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topnews","24":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}