Across a weekend where teens ran wild across the Gold Coast, two 15-year-old Pimpama boys, a 15-year-old Runaway Bay boy, a 17-year-old Marsden boy, a 15-year-old Peranga boy and a 14-year-old Oxenford boy were charged with one count of burglary and two counts of unlawful use of a motor vehicle.

Five of the juveniles will appear at Brisbane Children’s Court Monday and the sixth will appear at Brisbane Children’s court on 12 August.

It followed the sentencing on Friday of two youths for the fatal 2019 knifing of fellow teenager Jack Beasley.

Gold Coast Chief Superintendent Craig Hanlon said the weekend incident was one of a number of teen crime rampages from stolen vehicles to assaults across the Gold Coast during the weekend.

However, he said while teen crime was spiralling, the number of teenaged offenders was actually dropping, with hardened teen criminals actively recruiting “fringe dwelling” youngsters to help commit the crimes.

“What we’re seeing is the number of juvenile offenders is decreasing. But that 10 per cent commit almost 50 per cent of crime,” Hanlon said.

“They’re the ones who repeatedly commit offences, but what they also do is they target vulnerable kids, kids who are disengaged from their family, and they bring them into their web and then they commit offences with them.”

Hanlon said in the one incident on Sunday, teens stole a Land Rover, a Range Rover, and a BMW in three separate incidents across the Gold Coast.

PolAir tracked vehicles which began travelling north at speed through the northern Gold Coast before heading north on the M1 towards Brisbane and onto the Gateway Motorway. One of the vehicles was tracked to Pimpama where police stopped it using a tyre-deflating device.

“Then the offenders jumped into the other stolen vehicles and PolAir tracked that to Carindale,” Hanlon said.

“We deployed tyre deflation devices again and the vehicle was disabled and, I hate to say it, but it was like cockroaches they run.

“They’re unsophisticatedly co-ordinated. When one vehicle gets disabled, they just jump into another one.

“Lucky for us we had a dog squad nearby. The dog tracked all six offenders and we rounded them up at various houses where they were hiding, even one who was hiding in a downstairs toilet.”

Hanlon said in other incidents on the Gold Coast at the weekend, two teenaged girls allegedly stole a Lexus from Surfers Paradise. One 15-year-old girl has been arrested, with investigations continuing into the other offender who is believed to be aged 14.

“We know who the 14-year-old is. We’re confident we’ll round her up fairly quick,” Hanlon told ABC Gold Coast.

In yet another incident, two 13-year-old girls attacked a police officer after police were trying to find a guardian to take them home on Saturday. One of the girls allegedly punched an officer, who is in hospital recovering from a suspected fractured nose. The teen has been charged with assault.

Hanlon said the wild weekend showed teen crime was complex, with some offenders clearly “hardcore” while some were just “fringe dwellers”.

The same penalties could not apply to all, he said.

The State Government’s Youth Justice reforms introduced last year to target hardcore recidivist offenders, needed to be applied on an individual basis, he said.

“Now some of those are very serious recidivist offenders and will be dealt with accordingly, but there’s other ones who they get in and they’ll be treated accordingly too – so we’ve got to make sure that the main offenders may need to be treated differently to some of those people who are fringe dwellers and not doing the main offending,” Hanlon said.

“You’ve got to consider the cognitive capacity of people, what their true involvement was, why they got involved in the crime, and they we need to make sure that the corrective behaviour targets the person.

“Not everyone who commits a break and enter and steals a car is the main offender. Some of them may have committed serious offences previously so they should be treated differently to someone for whom this is their first offence.”

Hanlon said changing teen crime was a “long term strategy”.

“If you’ve got someone who 15, 16 or 17 who’s been committing crimes for a number of years, it takes a while to change that kind of behaviour,” he said.

“For some of these people, there’s social issues that manifest as law-and-order issues, and we need to address some of those social issues as well.

“But in saying that, they still need to be held accountable for the actions that they do.”