Updated

In December 2009, 61-year-old Martin Grove of Tweed Heads, shot himself in a neighbouring front yard. This came after months of harassment from local teenagers and refocused attention on the lack of police in the Tweed region.

Source: 7.30 New South Wales | Duration: 12min 43sec

Transcript

QUENTIN DEMPSTER, PRESENTER: Just two weeks before Christmas, 61-year-old Martin Grove, a resident of the Tweed, rode his bicycle to the front yard of a nearby house and shot himself.

The event did more than just shock the community. It put the spotlight on the behaviour of a group of out-of-control teenagers who witnesses say pushed Martin Grove over the edge.

The Tweed is an idyllic coastal spot just south of the border with Queensland's Gold Coast. But some residents now say they are living with fear and they often feel intimidated by behaviour on the streets. The death of Mr Grove has now brought the issue of community safety to a head.

Sharon O'Neill reports.

CARMEL JONES, VOLUNTEER RESCUE: That morning, he rang me and said, "Get out of bed, gal. What a beautiful sunrise it is up here. You should be up here to see it." And he was not in any depressed frame of mind.

SHARON O'NEILL, REPORTER: It was Friday morning, December 11 last year.

CARMEL JONES: I was driving up the road and he was driving down. I gave him a wave and he gave me a salute.

SHARON O'NEILL: 61-year-old Martin Grove had just finished his regular night shift at the Volunteer Marine Rescue at Point Danger in Tweed Heads.

Was he good at his job?

BERNIE GABRIEL, PRESIDENT VOLUNTEER MARINE RESCUE: Very, very good. Yes. No-one had complaints about Martin. Martin was a man that you could rely on, in an emergency, regardless of what it was.

SHARON O'NEILL: But while Martin Grove was volunteering his nights out of a sense of duty to the community, a gang of local teenagers was vandalising his property. When he arrived home that Friday morning, it was not a pretty sight.

CARMEL JONES: He found the trash all over the place and his car was trashed. I think the front windscreen was extremely damaged, there was garbage all over his lawn, defecation all over his entrance, pot plants everywhere else. It must have just pushed him over the edge.

SHARON O'NEILL: From all accounts, Martin Grove knew who was responsible for the damage to his property, and on that Friday morning, he got on his push bike and rode a few hundred metres around the block to this house, where he shot himself in the front yard.

CARMEL JONES: I was thunderstruck. They called me into the main office there 'cause I was out in the radio room and they sat me down and they said, "We've got some terrible news to tell you." And I thought, "Oh well, someone's resigned," you know. And they said,"Martin's just shot himself."

SHARON O'NEILL: The harassment of Martin Grove by a group of young local offenders had been going on for months.

CARMEL JONES: Well, he'd say at times, "They've cut off my power again to the house," or, "They've shot through my front windows," or, "They've trashed all my pot plants," or, "They've vandalised my gardens," "They've emptied my garbage bin all over the place when I got home, " "They've defecated all over my entrance," and sometimes when he was riding his bike up to work, a car would go past and it wasn't water bombs that they threw at him, it was urine bombs.

GEOFF PROVEST, TWEED MP: You've got a number of young people there that carry on a great deal of anti-social behaviour. There appears to be very little parental control, parental supervision. I know that our DOCS have taken a very active interest in there. And also, there is a lack of police presence out there and that's probably due to our lack of police numbers within the area.

SHARON O'NEILL: But the horror of Martin Grove's suicide did not put an end to the problems in this neighbourhood. Three weeks after his death, Phillip Gadsby was riding home after having a few drinks at a local club.

PHILLIP GADSBY: I looked up to the left (inaudible), seen a group of people, about 20, 25 people. They seen me. Somebody there must have identified me from living up the road, and they said,"That's him! That's him! Get him, get him, get him!" And I said,"I'm going, I'm going, I'm going home." With that, I was on my pushbike. I tried to do a U-turn. They chased me down. One of 'em hit me in the ear from behind and a split second later I've copped some sort of bat in the mouth.

SHARON O'NEILL: Phillip Gadsby called the police when he got home, but he says they didn't arrive for almost an hour and a half. He went to hospital and required stitches in his mouth. Several of his teeth will need to be replaced and he has a perforated eardrum.

Do you think that the people that were harassing Martin were involved in the incident with you?

PHILLIP GADSBY: Definitely, definitely, because where I got attacked was probably 50 feet from where he shot himself. And that's their little meeting spot at the street right up there and they all seem to congregate there, and then they disperse and go do their little crime spree, whatever they do.

SHARON O'NEILL: According to local residents, these teenagers along with others who come from outside the area are responsible for continuous property damage and harassment, particularly on the most vulnerable: those who live alone and the elderly.

PHILLIP GADSBY: They're fearless. They know they're above the law. They're like - they're just - they really don't care. They don't care what they do, they just think they're tough amongst themselves. You know, I think that's what their mentality is.

SHARON O'NEILL: And does everybody in the area know who the culprits are?

KELLY, NEIGHBOUR: Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

SHARON O'NEILL: And does it surprise you that they just continue to do it and get away with it?

KELLY: It does, really, because, like, the police officer lately, since the person that shot himself, they've been casing the area hours on hours on end through the night. And, like, you see them drive past and stuff - the culprits ride past and nothing happens. They still cause trouble.

SHARON O'NEILL: Geoff Provest is the local State MP for the Tweed. He says the lack of police presence is a huge problem, not just in West Tweed Heads, but throughout the region.

GEOFF PROVEST: We have one policeman per 750 of the population. The state average is one per 550. It's just inadequate and we've been pushing the case. We've had several murders in our areas through youth gang violence. We suffer one of the highest amounts of illicit drugs confiscation in our local area.

ANDREW EPPELSTUN, NSW POLICE ASSOCIATION: We have just a very compelling argument to say we need a Drug Squad here. I also believe that, look, if Tweed Heads was a Sydney Labor-held seat that we wouldn't even have to voice these concerns.

SHARON O'NEILL: Andrew Eppelstun is chairman of the Tweed Branch of the NSW Police Association.

ANDREW EPPELSTUN: Now this area is basically the second fastest-growing area in NSW out of Sydney. There is a population shift up here and the demands that it places on policing - we're not keeping up with the allocation of staff to the way the area grows.

SHARON O'NEILL: Tweed Heads is a diverse community. As a popular retirement location, the area is the second highest in the state for residents over the age of 65. But it also has a high percentage of single parent families. One in three families in the Tweed has only one parent living at home.

GEOFF PROVEST: We have some really good non-for-profit organisations like On Track and the Family Centre and that, but if you talk to them, they're scratching. They're overwhelmed with the current demand for their services and they just can't service anyway. So part of the cure is actually to work on prevention.

SHARON O'NEILL: St. Joseph's Youth Service is a supported accommodation program for young homeless people living in the Tweed. It provides a lifeline for those who have no alternatives.

JAMES: I had a lot of difficult times living at people's houses and that and I had nowhere to go, so - 'cause my mum pretty much did herself in. And once I found St. Joey's I kinda got into the organisation and had a roof over my head.

SHARON O'NEILL: Had you not been able to hook into this program, what do you think could have happened to you?

JAMES: I try not to think about that. I could still be in and out of friend's houses, or if not, living on the street and just have worser problems and, like, I might not have woken up.

JOHN STOREY, ST. JOSEPH'S YOUTH SERVICE: We do need a lot more resources, you know. You Know, I believe we do a great job with the money that we get, but certainly we could do with more properties for accommodation. We could do with more support workers. I don't know whether that's the solution, but obviously, you know, people, young people need somewhere to go. I mean, there is a lot of people - young people uncaptured in this area that are living in all forms of accommodation.

KELLY: If I didn't have the support that I've got, I probably wouldn't have my kids. I'd be honest, I probably would not have my kids. I would not be able to cope on my own.

GEOFF PROVEST: There's a lot of good kids in this town, a real lot, and I'd say it's only a small minority, but what's been happening is that they've been spiralling out of control. Last year alone we had 2,300 kids reported either child abuse or kids in need to our local DOCS agencies. Last year alone we had 100 kids taken away from their families. Now, if you look at those figures, that is escalating at around 20 per cent each year, and my concern is it's getting worse, it's not getting better.

SHARON O'NEILL: Geoff Provest says the Tweed area is crying out for greater resources, but the requests fall on deaf ears. In the meantime, he's trying to facilitate a community response to the growing crime problem with some of the area's young people and he says that response has to involve the kids themselves.

GEOFF PROVEST: Too many of these youth programs I've seen here in the Tweed dismally because no-one has bothered to go out and ask the kids exactly what the issues are.

TEENAGER: Well every time a tourist or something walks past me and my boys we always get a stare like we're gonna jump 'em or something, like we're gonna roll 'em, but we're really not like that.

SHARON O'NEILL: Local youth worker Neil Pengilley agrees the kids needs to be part of the solution, but like everyone else in the Tweed, he was shocked by the death of Martin Grove.

NEIL PENGILLEY, YOUTH WORKER: First reaction from me was, "Were any of my kids involved?" The first thing I needed to find out were they involved, and I call them "my kids" because I work with so many of 'em. And I've since found out that possibly one of those, maybe more, but I haven't got confirmation of who's there.

SHARON O'NEILL: And so when you found that out, the young person that you knew, were you shocked that he could be involved with something that might lead to someone taking their own life?

NEIL PENGILLEY: Yeah, I was. It really sorta ripped the heart out of me in knowing that the kid that I know and the kid that I work with is a great kid, you know, and to find out that he's possibly been involved in this was something that was sort of a bit tough to take.

SHARON O'NEILL: It's probably too soon for the residents of West Tweed to consider sitting down and talking to the local kids about solutions. In a community still in shock by the events of last December, the only talk now is of revenge. Do you think it's coming to that?

PHILLIP GADSBY: Oh, for sure, it will, unless something is done by the police, these people are charged and disbanded, unless the police just split 'em all up, I'm pretty sure it's gonna come to that, yeah.

SHARON O'NEILL: Martin Grove has still not been replaced at the Volunteer Marine Rescue.

BERNIE GABRIEL: People like that are not that easy to find, so he will be hard to replace, and not only in his job but also as a person known to us, and we're very, very upset about the whole thing.

CARMEL JONES: The people round here are determined that this is not to be swept under the table. This has gotta stop. That's their statement: it's got to stop.

QUENTIN DEMPSTER: Sharon O'Neill reporting. A police investigation into the death of Martin Grove has been conducted with the results handed to the coroner. Police say they are constrained in what they can publicly say about this case, but there are many other issues arising for the community and policing in the Tweed.