Moree residents seem to be taking home security more seriously with the number of incidents of residential break and enters significantly down over the past 24 months.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The latest quarterly crime figures from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reveal that ‘break and enter dwelling’ offences have decreased by 17.4 per cent in the Moree Plains Local Government Area (LGA) in the past 24 months up to September 2016.
Barwon Local Area Command (LAC) crime manager Detective Inspector David Silversides said much of the drop could be attributed to regular promotion and greater public awareness of the importance of home security
“We get a lot of information out to the community as far as improving security arrangements around the home,” he said.
“We also find a lot of offenders don’t want to have confrontation with people and, generally speaking, breaking into a house there’s greater risk of being confronted by someone.”
Despite this drop, the rate of break and enters from a dwelling in Moree Plains LGA is 4.2 times that of the NSW rate of recorded incidents per 100,000 population over the 12 months to September 2016.
Moree LGA is well above the NSW rate of crime for all but five categories of the 17.
While the rates of crime in comparison to the rest of the state may be high, Detective Inspector Silversides said the number of incidents of crime in the Moree Plains LGA has generally declined over the past 24 months.
“Yes we are in the red but we are seeing a reduction in a lot of those areas; we are trending downward,” he said.
“Non domestic violence-related assaults, steal from a person, break and enter dwellings and break and enter non-dwellings have trended down.
“We’re always evaluating what’s happening in the area and looking at ways to slow that crime level down and turn it in a positive direction.”
Detective Inspector Silversides said the prevention of crime is not just the responsibility of police but needs to be tackled with an interagency approach to address the underlying social issues that tend to drive crime.
“Although we are satisfied that crime across the board in the last 24 months is trending well, we’d like to continue to work with local government, other government agencies and the community to target offenders, provide information to police and support police in our operations overall,” he said.
