Mystery surrounds the apparent dumping of some heavy machinery over an embankment on Wilsons Creek Road.
A local resident told Echonetdaily the mini-excavator and trailer appeared to have been pushed over the embankment at Lavertys Gap on Monday night or early this morning and was the second piece of heavy equipment to have been pushed into a gully on the same steep, winding stretch of road in a matter of several days.
Police told Echonetdaily that, on Sunday morning, a local had reported that a traffic-signal trailer having been pushed down a nearby gully.
Police notified Byron Shire Council staff who attended and re-installed the traffic signal trailer on the road, which is under repair and partly closed.
The resident said he reported the traffic-signal trailer dumping after driving home the other night and noticing it was missing.
‘It was a pretty dangerous situation as I nearly ran into someone coming down the hill and realised they had not been alerted by a red-stop signal that was there earlier,’ he said.
‘I later noticed the trailer down an embankment and notified police and it was later reinstalled.
‘Then this morning, I noticed this trailer and excavator down a nearby gully near the spot where the traffic-signal trailer had been thrown over, and thought it was a bit of a coincidence that two bits of heavy equipment had gone down the gully within a few days of each other,’ he said.
Anyone with any information is urged to contact local police.
Hmmm…I could buy the story about the Traffic Signal being maliciously moved…however a piece of Telstra equipment weighing several thousand Kg?
I passed this scene on Monday around 2:30pm while two Telstra Utes and crew were in attendance… I find it hard to believe this was not a ‘Telstra Incident’ of their losing a piece of equipment whilst it was being towed; as Telstra would have little reason to leave a large piece of expensive, mobile kit on a steep, ‘guardrail absent’ bit of Wilsons Creek Rd.
More likely the Telstra boys responsible for this FU don’t want to cop to the responsibility.
“Anyone with any information is urged to contact local police.”
Here is an example of why the quality of police community relations is important for both police and the community.
The police often require assistance from the community, just as the community requires assistance from police.
When the police force is trusted and respected by the community, the community will readily assist the police.
Conversely, when the police are despised and distrusted by the community, such assistance will not be forthcoming and both the police and the community will suffer as a consequence.
It is therefore essential that both the police force and the community recognise the importance of having good police community relations.
To this end, the community needs assurance that police value and respect civil standards, and police need to realize the importance of public concern about the standard of police conduct.
Ideally, citizens should be able to express any concerns they have with police practices, and the police should be able to acknowledge and address those concerns in a responsible and mature fashion.
Unfortunately, it seems neither the community nor the police have yet attained that degree of confidence in themselves or each other.