Police report burglary rates falling in district

Police report burglary rates falling in district

29 February 2012 - by JOANNE FLEMING

SIGNS of a breakthrough in Down District’s long running domestic burglary problem emerged in the latest crime statistics.

At the final public meeting of Down District Policing Partnership (DPP) on Thursday, it was revealed there were 15 less domestic burglaries between April and December last year compared to the same period in 2010 — a decrease of 7.4 per cent.

The DPP is to merge with the local Community Safety Partnership to form a new Policing and Community Safety Partnership at the end of March.

While there were still 189 victims of domestic burglary during the reporting period, Chief Inspector Deirdre Bones said: “We have worked hard to decrease the overall number of burglaries over the past months and are now under target.

“Officers continue to be focused on tackling burglaries through hot spot patrolling, enforcing bail conditions of prolific offenders, and the Reducing Offending Unit which focuses their attention on the offenders.”

The number of seizures of alcohol from young people has increased by 8.5 per cent to 698 but the number of referrals to Down Council for drinking in bye law areas has decreased by 48 per cent to just 15.

“Although officers proactively seize alcohol there are a lot of occasions when youths the drink and run off therefore officers are not able to identify them,” said Chief Inspector Bones. “There have also been a number of youths dealt with by means of discretionary disposal for on street drinking.”

She added that officers had significantly increased the number of cases resolved by the use of police officer discretion to 189 (80.5 per cent) as required by the Local Policing Plan.

The number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads also ped by 44 per cent to 31.

“There was an operation held in the Rowallane sector with other agencies, which was geared towards ‘boy racers’,’ said the chief inspector. “This was replicated in Newcastle.”

Anti-social behaviour has risen slightly (2.4 per cent) over the last reporting period and the number of violence and injury crimes solved by police is down by 6.2 per cent. Overall, however, Ms. Bones indicated that total crime had fallen by 17.7 per cent over the past four years.

Responding to the latest figures, councillor Billy Walker said: “In all my time in coming to DPP meetings it is ironic that the last one should be so positive.

“Burglaries are finally going in the right direction and I just hope it can be sustained.”