Police pleased with crime count

By Cam Scott
INCIDENTS of homicide, rape, abduction, robbery and assault have increased in Casey in the past year, according to Victoria Police’s provisional crime statistics records.
The figures show only crimes against property and drug offences have experienced an overall percentage drop in Casey in the past 12 months.
The statistics reflect the number of offences recorded per 100,000 people and also show the percentage change from the previous year.
Across every class of crime against the person, which includes assault, robbery rape and homicide, Casey is up on last year’s figures, with an overall percentage increase of 22.9 per cent.
This is well above the 8.5 per cent increase across Victoria as a whole.
While Casey experienced a 19 per cent increase in crimes such as drug cultivation, manufacturing and trafficking, the drop in crimes of drug possession and use saw Casey’s overall drug offences drop by 8.2 per cent, which is in line with the statewide trend.
Throughout Casey, the figures reveal an increase in recorded offences in Lyndhurst, Hallam, Narre Warren North and East, Endeavour Hills and Berwick, while Narre Warren, Hampton Park, Cranbourne, Devon Meadows and Tooradin all showed a reduction in the number of offences they had recorded. The results have been labelled as encouraging by the Superintendent for Division Two (Casey, Greater Dandenong and Cardinia) Chris Ferguson.
He said that often the statistics didn’t reflect the extremity of incidents, some of which were minor, and in many cases reflected a greater policing emphasis on certain areas.
“The number of assaults against a person are up largely as a result of our new family violence policy approach. We have very strict reporting guidelines,” he said.
“As far as drugs, we’ve focussed on the cultivation, manufacturing and trafficking of them and we hope that by doing that, drug use will go down and these figures will support our strategies.”
Supt Ferguson said the figures were not cause for alarm by any means and praised the efforts of community members in assisting police.
“If you look at the figures, we’re encouraged by them because the categories that have increased reflect our increased efforts in those certain areas,” he said.
“We’ve received great support from the community especially throughout Casey. We’ve had some terrific results with the community assisting us in clearing up crime. It’s one of our most potent ways of clearing up investigations.”