Crime has dropped by nearly 5 per cent across Brimbank.
Crime statistics for the 2013-14 financial year reveal a 20.6 per cent drop in car thefts compared with the previous year, a 15.5 per cent decrease in assaults (excluding family violence), a 12.6 per cent dip in robberies and a 7.8 per cent drop in drug offences – all of it contributing to a 4.9 per cent reduction in overall crime.
On the flip side, there was a 20.5 per cent increase in the “other crime” category, which includes weapons and explosives offences, justice procedures such as intervention order breaches and bail offences, and harassment.
Brimbank bucked the statewide trend of a 5.7 per cent rise in overall crime, including increases in handling stolen goods, deception, car thefts and drug offences.
Brimbank’s Inspector Chris Gilbert said he was pleased with the results.
“If you look at the statewide rise, we’re going in the right direction,” he said.
“We’ve managed to achieve reductions in all our major crime categories and also for injury collisions.
“The key to these results has been a lot of hard work from a committed uniform team working from Keilor Downs and Sunshine.
“Our members receive terrific support from our intelligence operatives and we’re confident we can identify and respond to changing crime trends better than ever.”
Inspector Gilbert praised the Victoria Police ‘Blue Paper’, a 10-year strategic plan that assigns police numbers and creates taskforces based on population growth, societal changes and crime statistics.
The Blue Paper, which favours a more flexible model of policing, endorses the outsourcing of administrative work and back-office jobs such as IT and payroll. Inspector Gilbert said Brimbank police had made adjustments to the way they allocated police based on this model, so that police were out on the road at the right times, in the right numbers and on the right days.
“Despite the fact that crime against the person has gone down, family violence is still a big problem,” he said. “It’s good that the reporting of family violence has gone up, but we want to see actual offending go down.”
Inspector Gilbert said police would continue to focus on vehicle and property crime, and he called on the Brimbank community to help police by securing their homes and cars to thwart opportunistic burglars or car thieves.
