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It’s just past midnight on a Sunday in early March, and the streets of Melbourne’s west are dark but busy. Rain falls steadily, frustrating Victoria Police’s Detective Senior Sergeant Stacey Dwyer.
“It’s a good thing during the day, ’cause it’s good for sleeping,” she said. “It’s not good for what we’re doing tonight.”
I’m sitting in the back of an unmarked police car as Dwyer and more than a dozen other officers patrol the Melbourne suburbs with the highest rates of youth gang crime, as part of Victoria Police’s Operation Alliance. It’s in these suburbs, like Braybrook, St Albans, Melton and Sunbury, that authorities are on high alert for home invasions and aggravated burglaries.
The rain annoys Dwyer because it will decrease visibility and make the roads more dangerous. While she mans the radio, her offsider, Senior Constable Shannon Hill, navigates the unmarked car through gloomy backstreets.
Suddenly, a voice crackles through the radio: just around the corner, officers have pulled over a silver BMW coupe sporting stolen Queensland number plates.
When we arrive, police are speaking to a man in a white singlet and a woman wearing UGG boots, while other officers comb forensically through the car.
Police recognise the man, but he’s not part of a youth gang. “He’s a career criminal, so he knows the game,” Dwyer said.
Although he’s not who we are looking for, police later determine the silver BMW was stolen, making it one of a large and growing number of cars being taken from Melbourne streets.
Figures released by the independent Crime Statistics Agency on Thursday reveal more than 32,000 cars were stolen last year in Victoria, the highest number since 2001.
Car thefts have nearly doubled since 2022, and there has been an 83.97 per cent increase in the rate of stolen vehicles per 100,000 people.
In the 2024-25 financial year, motor vehicle insurance theft claims in Victoria rose by 59 per cent, with more than 12,000 claims made overall, totalling $223 million, according to the Insurance Council of Australia.
In 2025, Victoria’s total crime rate grew by 2.4 per cent, to 8885.5 offences per 100,000 people, but police said its analysis suggested crime was starting to stabilise after years of sharp increases.
Bob Hill, Victoria Police’s deputy commissioner of regional operations, said the year-on-year increase had forced police to reconsider their approach in addressing the crime.
New police intelligence suggests that 30-40 per cent of stolen cars are taken using electronic key-cloning devices, commonly used legitimately by mechanics to unlock and start cars. It can take as little as 10 seconds for a thief to start a car using this technology.
Unlike home invasions and aggravated burglaries committed primarily by young offenders, most cars are stolen by offenders aged over 25 who have learnt the craft through criminal networks, Hill said.
But stolen cars are also a key tool for youth crime and gangs.
Stories of teenagers breaking into homes, taking keys and stealing the car feature prominently in Melbourne’s tabloid and TV news.
Sometimes they’re just taken for high-speed joyrides. On Wednesday, for instance, a 16-year-old boy on bail was charged with aggravated burglary after cutting off his ankle monitoring bracelet and allegedly stealing a Lamborghini from Maribyrnong, alongside a 13-year-old girl and another 16-year-old boy. The trio allegedly evaded police for more than 14 hours, driving dangerously before they eventually crashed into a fence near a Glen Waverley shopping centre.
But on other occasions, the stolen cars are used by gangs for violent crimes.
“Some of those offenders are being employed by organised crime groups to again steal vehicles … using the young offenders as minions to go and commit their criminal behaviour,” Hill said.
There are many factors which contribute to teenagers joining gangs, Dwyer tells me from the front seat. They include lower socioeconomic backgrounds, growing up exposed to family violence or drugs and having older siblings or friends who are already gang members.
“It’s so important for us to try to intervene early when we’re with kids that are just kind of starting out,” she says.
This was easier in the past when crooks-to-be generally walked a well-worn path into criminal life, going from recreational drug use, to petty theft, to stealing cars. Along each stage, police could intervene and try to deter reoffending.
But the modern nature of youth gangs sees teenagers sometimes go from no prior offending to committing serious violent crimes.
After we leave behind the stolen BMW, calls continue to trickle in over the police radio, passed from Triple Zero call takers through to a supervisor at Sunshine police station and fed out to officers on the road.
One concerned mother calls police to report that three cars of teenagers wearing balaclavas are driving back and forth past her home, calling out to her young daughter inside and throwing toilet paper at the house. Another caller says a group of men were at her door threatening to kill her husband.
Despite the overall growth in crime, Dwyer says the risk of becoming a victim was still very low.
“I guess the important thing to [remember] is that Victoria really is a very safe place to live,” she says as we patrol. “And whilst it is really – what is this car doing?”
Mid-conversation, she spies a red Toyota Corolla driving erratically behind us in the rearview mirror. The officers let the car pass then drive behind it. The Corolla speeds up but we follow close behind. It belongs to a local rental agency known for lending cars to crooks.
When Dwyer activates the red and blue police lights, the Corolla slows before its driver slams on the accelerator. We don’t give chase, and watch as taillights quickly drift from view.
“This is how policing has changed,” Dwyer says. “We’ve learnt from our previous mistakes.”
In years prior, police may have chased the car. But the risk of causing an accident is too great, she explains.
“It’s hard though, isn’t it? A lot of us say [we’re] like dogs to cats … but in those circumstances, I don’t want that car speeding off from us and then driving into a family of five.”
Police now rely on its AirWing to track vehicles with thermal cameras and communicate the movements to officers in the area, who then position themselves at strategic intersections and deploy “stop sticks” to deflate tires and force the occupants to flee on foot.
Over the police radio and then later at Sunshine police station, Dwyer and I watch this play out shortly before 2am.
The AirWing tracks three carloads of copper thieves driving along a major highway. The cars were speeding, which caused the engine to run hot and make the vehicle glow in the aircraft’s thermal camera. Nearby general duties police were ordered into position, and one of the cars hits the stop sticks.
Two occupants fled and hid in the backyard of a nearby home, but can’t escape the camera. “You’ve got two [alleged] offenders in the yard there,” the operator tells officers at the scene. “He’s on your right, behind that fence, 10 metres on your right.”
The alleged driver, an 18-year-old man from Eynesbury, is frogmarched from the garden, taken into custody and charged with theft and other driving offences. His female passenger is released pending further enquiries.
Overall, the four nights of Operation Alliance patrols resulted in 16 arrests for car thefts, outstanding warrants and drug and weapons possession. Three stolen cars were recovered, three vehicles impounded, 40 bail checks carried out and 17 offences relating to bail breaches were identified.
On the final night of the operation, a man is arrested and charged after a sawn-off shotgun is found inside an allegedly stolen car in St Albans.
After watching the AirWing arrest at the station, Dwyer and her offsider head out on the road again about 2am.
Although it’s been a quiet night by Dwyer’s standards, after several hours cramped in the back of the police car, I’m ready to call it a night.
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