It was meant to be a suburb where you could put down roots and feel safe, but security camera footage capturing brazen prowlers creeping down driveways reveals a community living on edge.
Now, parents in Wright are taking self-defence classes, swapping footage in WhatsApp groups, comforting their frightened children and convincing them to sleep in their own beds after a string of late-night break-ins and car thefts.
For Wright resident Aseem Bhatter, who has watched the suburb evolve in six years, the escalation has reached a crisis point.
"This was always meant to be a nice, safe suburb, but in the last few months there have been back-to-back thefts and burglaries," Mr Bhatter said.
"It's a young community and every house is terrified, yet there's no police patrolling and no police station. We've paid huge amounts of money to live here, but when it comes to basic safety we've been denied."
Mr Bhatter recalled a terrifying recent attempted theft in his driveway.
"There were some teenagers trying to open my car in the driveway," he said.
"When they couldn't, they jumped my next-door neighbour's fence, opened his garage door and were about to take his two cars. His dogs woke up and started barking, so they ran off with the keys and left the cars behind."
Just two weeks later, prowlers returned to his street, checking front doors and side gates to target rear entries and laundries.
Fellow Wright resident Amelia Walton said offenders no longer make any attempt to conceal themselves.
"They're not even trying to hide their faces or disguise who they are," Mrs Walton said.
"They're quite brazen, running across the street with no attempt to be sleuthy about it."
The frustration among residents has been compounded by police response time. Victims said police dispatched from Woden station would take 15 to 25 minutes to arrive at the scene on a good day, even assuming they were given priority.
Residents said offenders exploited this window, knowing they had about 15 minutes before the police arrived.
"I love living here for the environment and bringing up a family in a lovely neighbourhood, but I don't like the lack of emergency services," Mrs Walton said.
"Knowing that if I have an incident, it's 20 minutes before someone's coming to help me at best - doesn't make me feel good with young children in a house where people are trying to get in late at night."
The experiences of residents in Wright are backed by numbers.
ACT Policing statistics showed non-motor vehicle theft drove criminal activity in Wright, rising to a peak of 79 incidents in 2025, representing more than two in five of all recorded offences. The surge in theft pushed the suburb's total annual criminal offences to a record high of 180 cases.
At a recent community safety forum, residents voiced their anger over what they viewed as a "catch-and-release" justice system, describing the "same repeat offenders in the same clothes" moving between Wright, Coombs, and Denman Prospect with impunity.
Attending the forum, Canberra Liberals member for Murrumbidgee Ed Cocks and Shadow Minister for Police Deborah Morris slammed the government's handling of crime in the Molonglo region.
"The fear in the suburbs is palpable," Ms Morris said.
"We really need to ask what kind of community we are becoming when young mothers are being encouraged to get self-defence classes to protect themselves just in case help doesn't arrive in time."
Mr Cocks, who along with Mr Bhatter has written directly to Chief Minister Andrew Barr's office, accused ACT Labor of walking back its election commitments.
"ACT Labor finally promised a police station on the eve of the 2024 election, only to reframe it shortly after as 'longer term' with no timeframe for delivery," Mr Cocks said.
"Our fear is that if the government continues to fail the community, people in Molonglo will begin to take matters into their own hands."
An ACT government spokesperson defended the timeline and said planning is actively progressing alongside the Molonglo Town Centre development.
"The government remains committed to delivering a police station in Molonglo," the spokesperson said, flagging a $2.5 million allocation across 2025-26 and 2026-27 for town centre planning, with a report due later in 2026.
Police Minister Dr Marisa Paterson said she remained "strongly committed to continuing to progress the work to ensure that Molonglo gets the policing and community infrastructure it needs for the future."
Addressing response times, ACT Policing said resources were dispatched using a priority framework where Priority One handles life-threatening calls, while Priority Two and Three cover non-critical events.
Police also said general duties officers operated via mobile patrol zones rather than remaining inside stations.
The debate over police and resource allocation comes amid a rapid expansion of the Molonglo region with more developments and new suburbs expected.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed the region's population grew by 40 per cent from 11,394 residents in 2021 to 16,026 in 2024, with government projections estimating more than 18,000 in 2025 on its way to 79,000 by 2065.
Criminal offences in the Molonglo region remained stable between 2021 and 2023 before climbing to a peak of 608 incidents in 2025.
The 26 per cent increase was primarily driven by rising non-motor vehicle thefts.
The increase in criminal offences across the Molonglo region did not match this rapid residential population growth, with recorded cases rising by 10 per cent between 2021 and 2024.
ACT Policing said it was "reasonable to expect that the number of incidents reported to police may increase year on year" for a rapidly expanding area.
