CoSafe off road vehicle crackdown

The City of Cockburn's response to the Cockburn Gazette, 19 July 2021 about CoSafe's crackdown on off road vehicles

Question: How many job requests have CoSafe dealt with regarding dirt bikes and/or off-road vehicles each year for the past five years?
Answer: 558 since July 1st 2020
 
Question: What suburbs have been the most common locations for such job requests over the past five years?
Answer: Yangebup, Treeby, South Lake in order (top 3)
 
Question: Does CoSafe have any hypothesis as to why there has been such a sudden spike this year?
Answer: Due to a more proactive operation, the service has been able to identify the issue more. Incident numbers haven’t increased as such, rather there has been an increase in reporting of incidents due to the community’s renewed faith in the CoSafe service.
 
Question: What power does CoSafe have once they have evidence of dirt bikes/off-road vehicles? Can they prosecute perpetrators?
Answer: CoSafe Team Leaders are ‘authorised officers’ and under State legislation they have the power to impound bikes. CoSafe can obtain warrants to seize off-road vehicles, where there is enough evidence to prove an offence has occurred.
 
The City can and does commence prosecution for repeat offenders. If the owner is convicted, the bikes may be sold or destroyed by the City.
 
Due to the age of riders, more often than not, it is their parents who are responsible for paying infringements or court costs.
 
Question: What has been the busiest month this year for dirt bike/off-road vehicles job requests?
Answer: May 2021
 
Question: Has CoSafe liaised with the police to attempt to cut down on dirt bike activity?
Answer: CoSafe launched a joint operation with WA Police in May 2021. This push led to higher public participation, with the highest number of incidents recorded during that month when two warrants were served and CoSafe impounded four bikes.
 
Question: Anything else you’d like to add?
Answer: The way CoSafe responds to these complaints and gathers evidence through community feedback is being closely considered by other local governments. This new way of tackling an ongoing issue is another example of CoSafe’s new and innovative structure of working with the community to make our suburbs safer.
 
A new CoSafe model was launched in July 2020 after an extensive review of the service. Community feedback showed significant support for CoSafe to be more responsive.
 
The previous CoSafe service was a fully contracted model, and the officers at the time were not specially trained or did not have the ability to be authorised under our local laws.