Eighteen months after Western Australian teenager Elijah Doughty was fatally run over, racial tension in Kalgoorlie is again ramping up online.

The Facebook groups are new but the outrage is the same, and with the community divide even more pronounced there are fears on both sides that someone else could be hurt.

"Recently the incitement to hatred and to murder and to kill has been building up again," Jessica (not her real name), who is a member of a private Facebook group that "exposes racists" in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, said.

Posts to a Facebook page claim to expose racists. ( Facebook )

Jessica, who identifies as an original nations person, said the group simply republished racist posts from other pages.

"The usual stuff, running kids down, how many bodies will it take to fill a mine shaft — making suggestions about what would happen if a kid mysteriously disappeared," she said.

"It's building up. People within the original nations community are feeling that there will be another [death]."

Deadly flashpoint

On the morning of the 29 August 2016, 14-year-old Elijah Doughty was struck and killed in bushland near Boulder by a man driving a ute.

The non-Aboriginal driver was pursuing the Aboriginal teenager, who was riding a motorbike recently taken from his property.

He was charged with manslaughter, but convicted on the lesser charge of driving dangerously occasioning death and sentenced to three years in jail in July 2017.

In the lead-up to the incident popular Facebook crimes pages at the time bore comments like:

"Feel free to run the oxygen thieves off the road if you see them."

Another read:

"Everyone talks about hunting down these sub human mutts, but no one ever does."

Resurgence of threatening comments

Eighteen months after Elijah's death and the protests it sparked, Daniel (not his real name) is frustrated and angry at what he sees as out-of-control youth crime in the region.

A screenshot showing a "name and shame" post on the 'Clean Up Kalgoorlie' Facebook page. ( Facebook )

He is an administrator for another private group on Facebook, which he says aims to "clean up" and prevent crime in Kalgoorlie.

Both he and the 'Clean Up Kalgoorlie' page have been targeted by the rival group Jessica is a part of.

"It's not just the Aboriginal community, but it's also the white children — it's not about race, it's not about colour.

"It's about crime and people getting away with it through the court system," Daniel said.

In the first week of January there were 60 reported burglaries in the city of Kalgoorlie, and 45 people were charged in connection with 70 break-ins in less than a month.

A significant proportion of those were juvenile offenders, one of whom was 13.

"The majority of the crime, as it's been put forth through the paper and things like that -- the majority of them are Aboriginal children being caught by the police or on CCTV," Daniel said.

"And for us, putting that on social media, and raising awareness of that, we've been categorised as racists."

A post to the Clean up Kalgoorlie Facebook page. ( Facebook )

Daniel said he and others in the group feel a growing anger as they continue to become targets of criminal behaviour.

It was that anger, he said, that prompted him to post:

"Probably gona start kicking the shit out of shitty little c***s peeking over fences n trying to steel peoples shit. "But guess what, when your sneaky little c*** of a kid goes missing ... sorry, but the police don,t have enuf cars, kevin rudd said sorry, we don't, WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH, sort your shit, or get sorted."

Daniel said he did not recall writing the post because he may have been drunk at the time.

Like Jessica, Daniel said he is worried someone else could get hurt.

"People are getting sick of having their things stolen, sick of being broken into in broad daylight," Daniel said.

"They're going to break into the wrong person's house one night, it could be a bloody bikie club member, it could be a neo-Nazi, it could be someone with a bloody samurai sword or a shotgun next to their bed."

Facebook groups clash over race

The 'Racists Exposed' group recently posted a photo of Daniel, his partner, and their two children, as well as pointing out the suburb he lived in and the school his children attended.

A Facebook page claims to expose racists in Kalgoorlie. ( Facebook )

But Jessica said there was no risk in defaming people.

"The definition of a racist is quite clear — when you're using terminology like abo, nigger, boong, coon and then talking about killing them — that's racist, period," Jessica said.

She said the members of the 'Racists Exposed' group were also against crime, but the idea that it was mainly Aboriginal people involved was inaccurate.

"White youth and white people are committing crime as well, and their statistics are right up there," Jessica claimed.

Local police agree that crime and associated drug use is an issue across the board.

District Superintendent Darryl Gaunt said the use of methamphetamine is "widespread across the entire community".

He wouldn't be drawn on claims that Aboriginal adults were encouraging poor behaviour from their youth.

"We find evidence of that across all ethnic groups — white, black, yellow, brown, green.

"You see it everywhere," Superintendent Gaunt said.

'Rumour and innuendo' rife

Superintendent Darryl Gaunt said these types of social media pages continue to be "disappointing".

A screenshot showing a comments thread on the 'Clean Up Kalgoorlie' Facebook page. ( Facebook )

"For a community that's trying to heal and mend itself, I don't see these type of posts and quite often uninformed comments helping that at all," he said.

"It's a great tool when used in the right way, but you can get ill-informed comment and you get a lot of faceless commentary.

"Sometimes it's people wanting to vent."

Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said any online racial vilification would be examined by police.

He said social commentary was often filled with false information.

"Some of the comments are really inflammatory, some of them are absolutely wrong, and some may incite more community unrest," Mr Dawson said.

"We have charged people criminally before; there's a threshold there that if people cross, we will prosecute."

The Commissioner said while he was conscious of tensions in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, he was not concerned that there would be a repeat of violent scenes witnessed in the wake of Elijah Doughty's death.

"I'm not seeing, at this stage, that heightened emotion," he said.

"The reports I'm getting are that the police and the community are working as hard as they can."

Racism not black and white

Jessica said the 'racists exposed' group was part of taking a stand against a racist sentiment that had been pervasive in Kalgoorlie for a long time.

"I would like to see more leaders in this town, more people who are in the public, or normal everyday citizens, start stating publicly that this behaviour is not acceptable in this town," Jessica said.

Daniel denies being racist.

"I have been, but when it comes down to it, I don't think I am," he said.