By LAURA WAKELY
BRIMBANK’s Burglary Unit arrested 43 offenders for more than 200 offences and recovered more than $100,000 in stolen goods in June.
Detective Senior Sergeant Paul Ziebell said the team, made up of four detectives and two officers from Sunshine and Keilor Downs stations, had been flat out trying to reduce burglaries across the police service area.
A burglary occurs every day in Brimbank – last weekend, there were 11 – and the most recent crime statistics revealed a 61 per cent increase in residential burglaries across Brimbank, forcing police to restructure units to focus on the crime.
“Our approach here was to go back to old-fashioned policing,” Det Sen Sgt Ziebell said.
“That’s out patrolling around, it’s gaining information from our reports, our intelligence reports, working out who our recidivist burglars were and targeting those individuals.”
Late last month, police arrested a man for more than 20 burglaries across Sunshine West, Melton and Yarraville, with 16 bags of stolen goods, worth more than $6000 recovered.
Det Sen Sgt Ziebell could not account for a reason for the increase in burglaries.
He said majority of the crimes occurred during the day in residential areas, but that patterns were unpredictable, with some burglars hitting their local area, while others would cross the city to target homes.
The unit has also introduced a new policy with regards to recidivist burglars, and will now always oppose bail for those arrests.
“It’s sending a clear message out to recidivist burglars that if you do commit an offence in Brimbank, we will lock you up,” Det Snr Sgt Ziebell said.
Police, with the courts, are also coming down hard on child offenders, with two teenagers sent to a juvenile prison in Parkville for a weekend after a burglary.
“They’ve had a taste of it, they’ve seen what we’re willing to do to stop these burglaries and we hope it will stop them offending again.”
Among the recovered items at Sunshine Station are laptops, mobile phones, watches, gold, Playstations, luggage, perfumes and even medicines.
Police were able to track down a St Albans man responsible for 32 burglaries last month after a victim reported their passports, spending money and boarding passes had been stolen hours before their scheduled trip.
It’s those stories, Det Sen Sgt Ziebell said, that made police “dig a little deeper”, putting in hours of overtime across the unit.
But police need residents help.
“We really want them to contact police and let us know of suspicious people, suspicious cars,” he said.
“Don’t approach them. Call police immediately.”
His tips for preventing burglary were to ask neighbours to collect mail and take bins in and out if you’re going away on holiday, also setting timers for lights and alarms.
He also said people can use cost-effective methods such as buying pieces of dowel and fitting them to the runners of windows, which stop burglars from being able to lift or slide windows open, and photograph valuables, including the serial numbers of laptops and phones.
“We feel that we’ve put a dent in the stats hopefully this month, but we won’t find out until next month. But I’m not a stat-driven person. It comes down to old-fashioned policing,” he said.
“You don’t need stats to tell you things are out of control. We’re acting on it.”
