Secret plans of teen crims exposed in leaked chats
"HERE shhh now me and (name) creeping in the room."
The inner workings of some of Townsville's most notorious teen crims can be revealed, as leaked messages between them reveal how they plan their exploits and then gloat to each other about the houses they've broken into and cars they've stolen.
The shocking social media messages obtained by The Bulletin detail months of criminal activity and organisation between the group.
"We wanna get at least 6 cars tonight," one of the teens writes to another, before saying, "nah for reals and we wanna ran biggie," (sic).
Photos show the group in stolen cars, wearing gloves, showing gang signs as they go on their exploits, appearing to encourage each other to go bigger with each post.
One of them asks, "Oi you rekon I will be alright to walk around?" the other replies, "year but just run from police thats all (sic)."
Videos show teens piled into a stolen car, gloved up with bandannas covering their young faces, groups of children show no remorse as they laugh into a camera after stealing from yet another Townsville victim.
This is just one of many shocking videos the young car thieves of the city share with pride to social media, boasting about their joy rides and sharing their loot to secret chats online.
The Townsville Bulletin has obtained some of these chats, from multiple Instagram accounts.
They taunt each other to come join while they "creep" through homes in search of car keys, money or valuables.
Some chats show the offenders asking their friends to bring gloves before picking them up to break into a home, while other conversations show some getting mad because they weren't invited on a stolen car joy ride.
At all hours of the night, the chats show some asking if they wanted to do "creeps"- a term used for sneaking around homes.
"Try get me out me and you do creeps," a chat read.
"Get (name omitted) bro we go do creeps," a boy wrote to another chat.
"I'm gonna try hit this one boy house he got lotta f------ money bro," one person wrote in a chat.
Above all, they make it known to each other when they are stealing cars.
"It almost Christmas wonder if Santa left any keys in the glovebox or any doors open, might get lucky," one post read.
Another conversation even led to a child trying to steal their own mother's car.
"Steal your mum car … steal it cause she wanna drink to much," a person wrote.
"Okay I do that then," the child replied.
"Yeah my sister, I take us everywhere them (sic)," their friend responded.
"Here shhh now me and (name omitted) creeping in the room," they replied.
Inside these chats, they share videos of these successful thefts, hooning around the streets of Townsville at more than 120km/h, with sometimes six other young people in the car.
Other videos show them trying to do burnouts in Land Cruisers, ripping up dirt in a Suzuki Swift, and driving dangerously in a sedan, all stolen from Townsville residents.
The culprits are never alone, always in a group of like-minded others, which is a trend a James Cook University criminologist said was an influential factor in this kind of behaviour.
Dr Mark David Chong said there was five main reasons young people posted their criminal behaviour to social media; building a reputation, a communication tool, recruitment, forming their identity and creating a public record of their lives.
Dr Chong said these young people would likely want to build their status quickly among their peers, and their reactions to these videos and photos shaped their possible pursuit down a further criminal path.
"It provides them with an interactive stage upon which they build what they think is their unique personal identity among their peers," he said.
Dr Chong said when young people with a youth justice system background come together, with emotions and hormones, and the addition of alcohol or drugs, it was a recipe for disaster.
"The chances of deviant and even criminal acts being committed are relatively high," he said.
"In fact, this risk is further increased when there is insufficient guardianship of these young people/children … or where there is insufficient managerial control of the places where these young people congregate to socialise."
Dr Chong said some of these youth offenders were not deterred by police seeing their public videos, saying it potentially provided them with "instant fame".
Townsville Chief Superintendent Craig Hanlon said the videos were "gold" to detectives.
"It actually helps us investigate and identify offenders and potentially identify other people involved in the offence," Supt Hanlon said.
"The information we get from those is gold for us.
"They're idiots, it's about ego."
Supt Hanlon said it was "surprising" how much information they could get from one video.
"So while you might have a principal offender who thinks they're being smart posting, they will actually potentially give us evidence of other people who might be committing the offence with them."
"The key for us is we want to make sure that we can deal with that as soon as possible."
Originally published as Secret plans of teen crims exposed in leaked chats
