But D, who is sipping Fanta through a straw at the Tarneit McDonald's, doesn't feel like any other teenager.

And he reckons police, passers-by, even the Prime Minister don't treat him like one. D is Sudanese.

"Africans aren't the only ones that commit crime," he says.

"But the news just focuses on the little crimes by Africans, rather than big crimes by anyone else.

"And it just makes it easier for people to judge a book by its cover."

The events of the past month have been framed as an escalation of a crisis engulfing Melbourne, but this has been a slow burn, rather than an explosion: another chapter in a decade-long story of young Sudanese men committing crime in intense bursts, and the angst that follows.

Usually, however, this angst has not drawn in a prime minister. Or unfolded during the build-up to a state election when perceptions of public safety could turn marginal seats.

African youth crime is not a new issue. But it is an issue that's escalated again over the past weeks.

D, an Australian citizen who arrived in the country in 2004, was involved in two of the recent incidents that sparked the furore; he was at the party at an Airbnb house in Werribee that saw the street trashed and heavily-armed police respond, and he has spent time at the Tarneit community centre described last week as being "hijacked by young thugs".

He says the behaviour was unacceptable, but that it was no different than what many teenagers, regardless of background, do across Melbourne on any given weekend. When it's D and his friends, it becomes political, he reckons.

It is often noted during outrage about youth crime gangs of a certain ethnicity that this panic has been seen before: fears about white kids, Middle-Eastern kids, Vietnamese kids, stretching back to the 1950s.

But none of those kids stood out like D does. None of them was tall and black.

Last month, he says he was stopped by police while walking along Derrimut Road, not far from the McDonald's.

He was told that because he was carrying a white towel, he had a similar description to a man wanted for burglary. He was going to the swimming pool, he told them, but was still arrested.

"We are just going to end up hating police. Why? Because we feel police hate us more," D says.

"There's good police, but there's a lot of bad ones, too.

"How can you respect someone who doesn't respect you?"

Respect - not a lack of job prospects, or problems with education, or an absence of strong leaders, or a weak judiciary - is what one former policeman with almost two decades of experience dealing with youth crime in marginalised communities believes is the biggest issue; on the side of the force, and the kids.

"There's just a real lack of appreciation for the seriousness of committing crime," the former cop said.

"There's a lack of respect not just for police, but for the law, and for what it means for their lives when you get a conviction."

But the former cop, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he also believed the force had been impatient in their dealings with some communities, losing their respect.

"When we are getting stuck into about the crime stats [getting worse], it just rains down like shit on everyone.

"We go out, hit hot spots???'monstering' the crime out of a community, they used to call it.

"We arrest 30 people for anti-social behaviour, get a big green tick...but that just leads to a deteriorating and deteriorating and deteriorating impression of police."

The use of the term "gangs" is emblematic of the tension within the police force, between those who want to smash into youth crime, and those who believe there is a smarter way.

South Sudanese community leaders such as Richard Deng believe that using the term is, at the very least, unhelpful and inaccurate.

But acting Chief Commissioner Shane Patton made a point of doing so this week, after police had been less definitive publicly as the issue built.

The stance was curious, given the force's submission to last year's federal inquiry into migrant settlement outcomes, which said youth offenders increasingly identified with the Apex gang after it gained national notoriety.

"Victoria Police therefore cautions against any tendency to inflate the extent of youth 'gang' activity in Victoria," the statement reads.

The same submission spells out that youth offending is decreasing, but a smaller group of offenders are committing more crimes, and that those aged 10-17 who were born overseas averaged more offences than those born in Australia.

Other data from the Crime Statistics Agency, when compared with population data, suggests Sudanese-born youth offenders are seven times more likely to be charged than Australian-born offenders, but that their impact on the overall crime rate is minute.

Government and police sources say this has led to a significant population of African-born males in youth detention - as many as a quarter of the population.

Some of these young men found themselves there because of a concerted effort by police to crackdown on the most serious offences - carjackings, home invasions, armed robberies - that had increased significantly since the start of 2016.

Attempts to stamp out these crimes - linked to what police termed youth network, rather than gang offending - were not as swift as they could have been, senior officers have conceded, especially given the trauma caused to victims..

"If you're the victim of one of those violent aggravated burglaries or carjackings or you know someone who has been a victim, I can think of nothing worse," Deputy Commissioner Andrew Crisp said last year.

This week's series of high-profile offences came several months after police felt the worst was behind them.

Late Friday - more than three weeks after the first incident occurred - Commander Russell Barrett was speaking about more "horrendous offences" in the west, including bashings, robberies, and violent home invasions.

The upcoming state election has simply added fuel to the blaze.

One senior officer is certain some of them will do as other members of youth street gangs have done in the decades before, and become serious organised crime figures.

"It's inevitable. There will be people who grow out of this but there are others who are just angry and just bad."

Sudanese men Sebit, 19, and Devarn, 18, fear another consequence.

They want it known that the bundling of young people from a continent of 54 countries into a synonym for trouble - African - is fuelling hatred.

Sebit has been in Australia since he was four, and says he was first called the N-word in primary school.

He feels he will never be recognised as Australian unless he becomes an athlete, a musician or a model.

Meanwhile, he fears being attacked. It has almost been forgotten that, 10 years ago, a Sudanese teenager who also had his troubles with police, Liep Gony, was beaten to death by a pair of men, one of whom had earlier yelled he was going to "take my anger out on some niggers".

"How are we supposed to assimilate if we keep being told how different we are?" Sebit asks.