Casuarina Shopping Centre has imposed a 48-hour ban on school students from attending the premises.
It follows after a spate of incidents that happened last week, involving large numbers of school students fighting and displaying disrespectful behaviours – with a young person injured during a fight.
The ban includes all school students from Casuarina Senior College, Sanderson Middle School, Dripstone Middle School, Darwin Middle School, Darwin High School and Nightcliff Middle School.
It commenced on Monday morning with centre management employing extra security to stop students from entering the centre, as well as extra police presence.
Centre manager Polly Lamond says the behaviour displayed by school students is unacceptable and the shoppers and employees experience it on a daily basis.
“The fighting and just general nuisance behaviour, the fighting is the real concern but really, we deal with a lot of vandalism, graffiti, our furniture being ruined, it’s all of that stuff as well,” she says.
“We really just don’t want to tolerate kids vaping in the shopping centre, walking all over our furniture and just not being respectful of the space.”
Centre management have received support from the Department of Education and principals to enforce the ban, with hopes of showing students anti-social behaviour is not to be tolerated.
Ms Lamond says it’s the actions of a few school students that have ruined it for the rest who are well behaved in the centre.
“It’s a minority making it difficult for the majority unfortunately,” she says.
“But we think it’s necessary to do this because we can’t have these large fights happening in the shopping centre, it’s just not on.”
The 48-hour ban is set to lift at the end of the day.
