Police have charged two men with trespassing after a group of residents marched on houses they believed belonged to alleged offenders in Central Queensland.

Kickboxing gym owner Torin O’Brien on Sunday held an anti-crime rally at a public park in Rockhampton after a relative’s home was allegedly broken into. 

Police said following the gathering, about 60 people moved to the front yards of various addresses and 15 people were issued with move-on notices.

Capricornia Police District Detective Inspector Luke Peachey said police had charged two people with trespassing in relation to the event.

“Four people jumped … into the backyard of someone’s place, and they’ve committed an offence,” Detective Inspector Peachey said.

“We’ve charged two of those people with trespass and they’ll appear in the Rockhampton Magistrates Court.”

He said investigations were continuing into the incident and urged the public not to take matters into their own hands.

“I don’t care what side of the stone you come from. If you’re committing offence, and police detect those, then you will be charged.”

The men, aged 18 and 25, are due to appear in court next month. 

The community’s ‘bubbling’

Detective Inspector Peachey said he understood community frustration about crime but vigilantism was not the answer.

“It disgusts me some of the behaviour that’s going on with [criminal] property offence, but the last thing we can have is untrained people going around and trying to try to take matters in their own hands,” he said.

He said police were addressing property crime appropriately and had arrested seven people on property offences in the last week alone.

“We’ve got a designated team that works [on this] 24/7,” Detective Inspector Peachey said.

Facebook removes content

In the days after the anti-crime meeting, Mr O’Brien’s personal Facebook page was taken down by the social media giant.

The Facebook group he had created, which had grown to nearly 12,000 members in a matter of days, was also taken down.

A spokesperson from Facebook’s owner, Meta, said Mr O’Brien’s page and the group were removed for violating the platform’s bullying and harassment policies and community standards.

Despite this, Mr O’Brien began posting to other social media channels, coordinating what he named a “people’s patrol”.

A video of him, along with several other cars patrolling in Gracemere, was posted to social media.

Detective Inspector Peachey said he was aware of the convoy, which police monitored closely.

Meeting with police

Mr O’Brien is the former president of the Patriots Defence League of Australia, which was de-registered in 2015 by the Office of Fair Trading in Queensland, and a former One Nation candidate.

He met with police Thursday morning and said it was productive and he was open to further discussions with officers and local politicians.

Detective Inspector Peachey said it was a “good conversation” and police had planned further meetings today with leaders in the Indigenous community. 

State Labor Member for Rockhampton Barry O’Rourke confirmed he had invited Mr O’Brien to meet with himself and police in an attempt to “de-escalate” the situation.

Mr O’Rourke said the gym owner did not confirm his attendance and was engaging in behaviour that the MP believed to be a “risk to the community”. 

He said due to that behaviour, the meeting had been cancelled.

Mr O’Rourke said he would continue to support police in their efforts to “prevent the situation turning into a tragedy”.