By Danielle Kutchel
Hot on the heels of the release of crime statistics for the March quarter, Local Area Commander Inspector Don Brown has weighed in on the priorities for the City of Casey’s men and women in blue.
Overall, Insp Brown said data released on Thursday 20 June shows that crime in Casey has increased by 7.9 per cent for the year ending March 2019.
He said that high volume crimes, which include theft of motor vehicles or from motor vehicles, have been a focus for local police – but have increased nonetheless.
“Unfortunately we have seen an increase in these type of offences with theft of motor vehicle increasing by 43.6 per cent and theft from motor vehicle increasing by 20 per cent,” he said.
“We know these type of crimes have been a concern recently and police will continue to proactively target known hotspots in an effort to detect and deter offending.”
Police will also be proactively targeting known hotspots for burglary offences, even though the data showed these types of offences decreased by 3.7 per cent.
Meanwhile, the latest figures showed that drug offences of all types increased.
Insp Brown said this could be attributed to enforcement activity, which contributed to a 56.7 per cent rise in drug trafficking and dealing offences in the 12 month period to March.
As for home invasions, Insp Brown said any such incident was a concern for police.
“We know they have significant and long-lasting effects on victims. That is why police are relentless in investigating and hunting down these particular offences.”
Asked whether Casey could indeed be considered a ‘crime hotspot’, Insp Brown said Casey has received additional police resources.
“Casey is a busy growth area which has been a priority for additional resources as part of the 2729 police officers set to join the organisation between 2018-2022,” he said.
“In the most recent deployment, Casey received an additional 36 general duties police officers and 26 shared divisional resources.”
Crime statistics are processed, analysed and published by the Crime Statistics Agency. The Agency is independent of Victoria Police, to maintain transparency and ensure statistics are easily accessible to the public.
