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Tangentyere Council Patrollers; Elek, Catriona --- "Relhe Marre Tnyeneme: Community Patrols in Alice Springs: Keeping People Safe" [2007] IndigLawB 38; (2007) 6(28) Indigenous Law Bulletin 24

Relhe Marre Tnyeneme: Community Patrols in Alice Springs: Keeping People Safe

by Tangentyere Council Patrollers, with Catriona Elek

Nightly across the country, Indigenous community patrollers do a difficult and important job meeting the needs of their people and the wider community, often with little recognition or remuneration.

While they can be seen as performing ‘policing’ activities in the broadest sense of the word, Indigenous community patrols perform a very different role to the police service itself. Patrols are prevention and acute intervention services, working to resolve disputes and intervene in situations of family conflict before harm is caused. They are Indigenous initiatives, operating within Indigenous culture, empowering people to provide justice and conflict resolution services within their own communities.

Tangentyere Night Patrol is one such patrol service. Five nights per week, Indigenous employees patrol town camps and Alice Springs in a vehicle fitted with communication equipment and first aid supplies.

Despite considerable reform to policing practices in the Northern Territory (‘NT’), the perception of police by community members is not always positive. As one current patroller recounts, ‘as soon as people see the [police] badge, they run away.’[1] Anecdotally, community members are certainly less likely to talk with police than with patrollers about a problem and how to solve it. ‘Night Patrol has trust and respect because it is staffed by Indigenous workers who speak language and know where they’re coming from because we experience it every day,’ a patroller explains.[2] Tangentyere Council Executive Director William Tilmouth believes Night Patrols are successful in preventing and mediating antisocial behaviour and family conflict because of their strong community connections. He says, ‘Patrollers have the cultural knowledge and connections to be able to solve a problem before it begins. They are proactive, not reactive.’[3]

Patrollers intervene in arguments, calm situations down and take action to prevent them escalating again. For example, they can intervene to prevent a family dispute that may otherwise culminate in an assault. They might be called by someone who doesn't want to call the police, but does want the situation to be resolved. Often an immediate solution can be as simple as transporting that person across town to a safe place. However, this requires knowing where to take him or her, so as not to cause more trouble. With his or her permission, referrals will then be made to get further help the next day. According to patrollers, police would only be called to such situations once it was too late.

In another example, with their ‘insider’ knowledge, patrol staff notice when more cars than usual come in from out bush to a certain town camp. They know if there is something brewing, and will talk to people in an attempt to prevent an incident. ‘We know who’s associated and where they should be going [to stay safe].’[4]

Alice Springs Town Camps

In 1928, Aboriginal people were banned from Alice Springs, forcing traditional owners to form camp sites on the perimeter of town. These also became homes for families of part-Aboriginal children placed in institutional care in Alice Springs.[5]

After decades of struggle, these sites became the town camps of Alice Springs, for which residents gained perpetual leases. The 191 houses on the 19 town camps are filled with many proud and strong community members, despite the fact that they face disadvantage according to nearly every social indicator; education, health, employment, poverty and rates of imprisonment included. There are around 2000 permanent residents and up to 1000 visitors from remote communities every year.[6]

The Beginnings of the Patrol

Tangentyere Night Patrol was established in 1990 to improve community safety on these town camps by resolving conflict in an ‘Aboriginal way’. Tangentyere now also operates a Day Patrol and a Youth Night Patrol.

Community patrols evolved to intervene in situations where Aboriginal people are at risk of becoming enmeshed in the criminal justice system, or where they face multiple hazards associated with community disorder, alcohol, drugs and violence.[7] ‘Patrols fulfil multiple roles of care and protection, are a buffer between the community and the police, and are often able to provide police with early warning of trouble that may require their intervention.’[8]

While some patrols across the country have formed in response to under-policing by the police service, Tangentyere’s patrols were clearly formed in response to perceived over-policing.[9] Tangentyere Council was concerned about the treatment of Aboriginal people by the police at the time, and were inspired to form a community patrol by the success of the night patrol recently formed in Tennant Creek by Julalikari Council.[10] The work of patrols was legitimised in the wider community in 1991 by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (‘RCIADIC’), which recommended that Indigenous people should be kept out of the criminal justice system, particularly for minor offences.[11]

Tangentyere Night Patrol received the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Violence Prevention Award in 1993 in recognition of a 20 per cent reduction in assaults and a 10 per cent reduction in criminal damage in its first three years of operation. The service was commended again under the Australian Violence Prevention Award in 1999 and won the Award again in 2002.[12]

Cultural Expertise, Not Coercive Powers

Tangentyere patrollers do not have powers of arrest, coercive powers or weapons of any sort. Instead they take a preventive approach. They are not de facto police. Their most valuable weapons are cultural knowledge and verbal persuasion coupled with the esteem in which community members hold them.

Employees of the Night Patrol live on or have strong links to town camps. Many are speakers of more than one Aboriginal language, and some are senior community members. They are governed by and accountable to the Executive of Tangentyere Council, which is made up of elected representatives from each town camp. Such community governance is identified as an element of best practice for Indigenous drug and alcohol projects,[13] and across the country it has been recognised that endorsement by community leaders is important to ‘authorise’ the work of patrols.[14]

Although the patrol started in part because of concerns about policing practices, Tangentyere Night Patrol and the police now have a strong working relationship. Alice Springs’ Superintendent Sean Parnell, is a great supporter:

Night Patrol assist [the police] greatly in improving community safety, especially in town camps. While the police do monitor identified hot spots in town, some of which include sites in town camps, the resources and knowledge of the patrollers are of great benefit to us and the wider community, especially Aboriginal people. The town would be worse off without the patrol.[15]

Cost and Benefits, Expectations and Strengths

A review of services to Alice Springs town camps in 2006 found that:

There is a general consensus that an effective community patrol program, in conjunction with policing, has the potential to contribute significantly to early intervention and the prevention of conflict and inappropriate anti-social behaviour, and should be supported…Tangentyere Night Patrol service is well known to the broader community and enjoys widespread community support.[16]

Several evaluations, reviews and reports relating to community patrol services have been published which have identified benefits of patrol services for Aboriginal people and the wider community. Such benefits include reducing violence, including domestic violence, assisting in the prevention of child abuse, increasing community perceptions of safety, minimising the harm of substance misuse, creation of jobs and self esteem for community members, and reducing the costs incurred by other services, such as incarceration.[17]

The Tangentyere Night Patrol service has a detailed data collection system in place, developed in partnership with The National Drug Research Institute, along with Julalikari Council and Kununurra-Waringarri Aboriginal Corporation.

In 2006, the Night Patrol assisted 5474 clients, arising from 9396 encounters. The vast majority of encounters occurred as a result of ‘routine patrols’ of town camps or public spaces, rather than responses to any particular situation or ‘call out’.

• Violence or a disturbance was the specified reason for action in 8.7 per cent of cases yet only 1.3 per cent of all clients were taken to police. In all other cases, the Night Patrol managed to diffuse the situation on their own, preventing contact with the criminal justice system and saving the efforts of the police service.

• 7.3 per cent of all call-outs occurred because Police called on the Night Patrol to assist them. In addition, 32.3 per cent of call outs were from local residents who called on the Night Patrol. In both these cases, the burden on the Police service can be assumed to have been reduced.

• 68 per cent of client actions involved taking the client home or to a safe place as an early intervention strategy to avoid injury, fighting and other risks. The cultural expertise of patrollers enables them to make a judgment about which clients are at risk, requiring removal to a safe place, thus minimising the impact on other services.[18]

Although there is widespread support for Tangentyere Night Patrol,[19] there remain some unrealistic expectations about just what three patrollers in one car in a city of around 25,000 people can achieve. Despite annual funding from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department, there is widespread recognition that Tangentyere Night Patrol, like many Aboriginal community patrols, has not been adequately resourced.[20] However, Tangentyere Night Patrol draws its strength not from its income, but from its community connections. For such a service to remain effective, organisational and cultural integrity must be preserved.[21] The community respects the authority of Tangentyere Night Patrol; authority which would not be conferred upon a team of workers from outside the community. The Night Patrol performs a service that would not be possible without such relationships.

Tangentyere’s Night, Day and Youth Patrollers are, in alphabetical order: James Briscoe, Mike Campion, Jack Crombie, Terasa M Dodd, Teresa R Dodd, Patrick Doolan, Wayne Doolan, Cheryl Egan, Roslyn Forrester, Christina Jack, Creed Joseph, Tristan Kemp, Carlene Lechleitner, Robert Naylon, Bob Taylor and Raelene Williams. Their supervisor is Marg Reilly. Catriona Elek is the Manager of Social Services. The first portion of the article’s title is in Arrernte.


[1] Interview with Carlene Lechleitner (Day Patroller, Tangentyere Council, Alice Springs, 19 June 2007).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Interview with William Tilmouth, (Tangentyere Council, Alice Springs, 7 February 2007).

[4] Interview with Roslyn Forrester (Night Patroller, Tangentyere Council, Alice Springs, 19 June 2007).

[5] Phillipa Strempel, Sherry Saggers, Dennis Gray, Anna Stearne, ‘Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Projects: Elements of Best Practice’, (ANCD Research Paper No 8, Australian National Council on Drugs, 2003) 6.

[6] Denise Foster, Julia Mitchell, Jane Ulrik, and Raelene Williams, ‘Population and Mobility in Town Camps of Alice Springs’, (Tangentyere Council Research Unit, Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, Alice Springs, 2005) 43.

[7] Harry Blagg and Giulietta Valuri, ‘Aboriginal Community Patrols in Australia: Self-Policing, Self Determination and Security’ (2004) 14(4) Policing and Society 313-328, 315.

[8] Alice Springs Town Camp Review Task Force, Review Report (2006),46.

[9] Blagg and Valuri, above n 7, 314.

[10] Commonwealth, Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, National Report (1991), Recommendations 83-91.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Strempel et al, above n 5, 17.

[13] Ibid 2.

[14] Blagg and Valuri, above n 7, 317; Leah Lui and Lynda-ann Blanchard, ‘Citizenship and Social Justice: Learning from Aboriginal Night Patrols in NSW’ (2001) 5(5) Indigenous Law Bulletin 18.

[15] Interview with Superintendent Sean Parnell (Alice Springs,26 June 2007).

[16] Alice Springs Town Camp Review Task Force, above n 8, 9 and 46.

[17] Lui and Blanchard, above n 14, 18; Brooke Sputore, Dennis Gray and Chris Sampi, ‘Review of the Services Provided by Jungarni-Jutiya Alcohol Action Council Aboriginal Corporation’, (National Drug Research Institute, 2000) 18-19; Anne Mosey, ‘Final Evaluation of Ali Curung Night Patrol’,(Evaluation on behalf of Ali Curung Community Government Council, 2000) 4-5; Rex Wild and Patricia Anderson, Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle: Little Children are Sacred, Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, Northern Territory Government (2007) 191.

[18] Tangentyere Patrol Database, data extracted June 2007.

[19] Alice Springs Town Camp Review Task Force, above n 8, 46; Strempel et al, above n 5, 13-14.

[20] Alice Springs Town Camp Review Task Force, above n 8, 47; Blagg and Valuri, above n 7, 320; Wild and Anderson, above n 17, 191; Strempel et al, above n 5, 18.

[21] Blagg and Valuri, above n 7, 316.


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