Queensland politics is increasingly operating in a parallel universe, where the politicians and bigwigs live one life, and voters are assigned to another.

Let’s just take the revelations around the police service, where the actions of some officers have been found to be sexist, underhand and downright criminal.

Despite Judge Deborah Richards’ findings, those police – who you pay for with your taxes – continue to keep their job, and climb the police ladder.

Those responsible for them – their leaders, including Commissioner Katarina Carroll – also get to cling onto their jobs.

In large part, according to insiders, that is because Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk does not want to appoint, and then sack, a senior female. It would be “a bad look”, they say – and we all know this government is focused on how things look, more than how they work.

Back to the parallel universe analogy. This week allowed us to look through that window into the world where accountability is nil, pay-packets are full, and your view doesn’t count too much.

But perhaps, as the next election nears, the Palaszczuk Government will be forced to look outside its lofty window into the other world – where the rest of us live – and where neighbourhoods feel weighed down by a crime siege.

Perhaps it’s just a perception built on the back of Facebook footage, where CCTV cameras are capturing teens, in the middle of the night, trying their hand at cars and homes in suburbs, always considered safe.

And that’s being perpetrated by police, who continue to call for dash cam and CCTV footage in investigations. Indeed, police are calling for members of the public to upload footage of suspicious activity onto Axion Citizen, and in one neighbourhood a recent police bulletin even encouraged residents to “cut back bushes and trees’’ to make it easier to spot suspicious activity.

This is a crime fight that the police big brass is not talking about it. Neither is police minister Mark Ryan. Nor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

But they should be.

Is the increased use of CCTV stopping crime? Or might it be encouraging vigilantism and fear, in equal measure?

Read any suburban crime page, on any day, and the theme in a ring of suburbs around the city, stretching for kilometres, is the same.

Residents picking up “absolute mongrels’’, “low lifes’’ and “little mutts’’ wondering the street. Others encouraging families to buy a dog, price an electric fence, use a taser-type device that gives electric shocks when someone enters a car – and even to join others in driving around, in the dead of night, looking for the trouble-makers.

Isn’t this the job of police? Shouldn’t we be talking about this?

“Not everyone can afford all the security. I’m going with a big cricket bat,’’ one Facebook user says.

“Be aware. 1.40am. 2 guys in shorts, black hoodies, no shoes casing houses around X street and X street. Driver waiting in car for them. Saw the vermin and shouted out and they ran to car and sped up X street. Unable to get number plate etc as car lights off.’’

Next, photos of cars, stolen from the suburb next door on Saturday night, are uploaded.

“All it will take is that these rats of society will call on the wrong house,’’ someone else promises.

“My partner just spotted a woman wearing a white top walking down X Road with a shopping trolley full of push bikes,’’ someone chimes in.

Except she wasn’t.

“OMG. That woman pushing a so called trolley of push bikes was me and it wasn’t a trolley full of bikes. I rode my bike to Woolworths and I had too many groceries to ride my bike home so I put my bike on the trolley and pushed it home. I had only one bike which ISN’T STOLEN. IT’S MINE.’’

The accuser doesn’t back down. “As a member of the community I have a duty of care to alert authorities of suspicious behaviour. It is up to the authorities to carry out investigations’’.

This on another morning: “How far off as a community are we from fighting back; it’s getting out of control.’’

By fighting back, it’s clear: joining forces, lying in wait, stopping crime his way.

“Just had a male, around 6 feet tall, blonde hair with a black pack back and white hoody try to enter our property … No answer at police station.’’

Another photo is uploaded. A young teen, probably not yet 15, flipping his finger at a security camera.

If Annastacia Palaszczuk or Mark Ryan read these social media pages, they’d know there is a wave of fear – real or imagined – happening in electorates across Brisbane, that residents believe youth crime is out of control, and they doubt the police ability to stop it.

It’s the world of those who vote for the politicians; a world away from the Government’s attempts to ‘media manage’ what voters see and hear.

It will be harder to media manage when a midnight break-in leads to heartache. Or an innocent teen, wearing the wrong colour hoodie and riding a scooter, is attacked because “it looked suspicious’’.

“Can’t sleep. Every noise I’m up wake, checking,’’ one woman says.

And then a flood of comments about our politicians and whether it is even worth lobbying for an increased police presence.

This is a crime debate that the Government is – wilfully or otherwise – ignoring.