By XAVIER SMERDON
CRIME in Wyndham has increased over the last 12 months by almost 10 per cent, thanks to the booming population, despite police working longer hours.
Victoria Police released their latest crime statistics last week showing that the total number of crimes recorded had increased from 9831 last year to 10,806 this year, an increase of 9.9 per cent.
Residential burglary increased by a staggering 22.6 per cent while other types of burglaries went up 32.6 per cent. Inspector Bill Weatherly told Star that the size of Wyndham’s population was impacting the figures.
“The population in Wyndham has passed the 170,000 mark, and the residential growth (new houses under construction) is amazing,” Insp Weatherly said.
“Residential Burglary is our number one concern in Wyndham and our Burglary Unit continue to work long hours to address this huge problem,” he said.
Insp Weatherly said the Werribee Burglary Unit had continued to make a large amount of arrests.
“Over the past 12 months the Burglary Unit have arrested and charged over 100 individual offenders for residential burglary, that is approximately one every three days,” he said.
“Recently they charged one offender for burglaries, not only in Wyndham but in Brimbank, Melton and the northern suburbs. They recovered property estimated at well over $300,000.”
The number of injuries caused by road accidents is one area the police have had a win, with the number of incidents falling to 374, a decrease of 8.6 per cent.
Insp Weatherly said the police would continue to work hard to try and reduce the number of crimes committed in Wyndham.
“Robbery had a big spike over the past 12 months however in the last three months we have seen a dramatic decrease. Again several good arrests have been made,” he said.
“There would not be a week goes by that we are not running an operation to reduce crime or serious collisions.”
