Winter campaign helps reduce town's burglary figures (From The Advertiser Series)

Winter campaign helps reduce burglary figures in Stanley

9:16am Monday 25th February 2013 in News By Bruce Unwin, Chief Reporter (Durham)

A WINTER campaign to curb the scourge of house burglaries has proved a success.

Operation Goldpoint helped reduce year-on-year domestic break-in offences in Stanley, County Durham, by a third.

Durham Police’s Stanley Neighbourhood Policing Team launched the targeted drive on November 15 and it ran for two months, taking in the Christmas/New Year period, until February 15.

It consisted of several different police actions, starting with several evening PACT (Police and Communities Together) sessions across the town which local people were invited to attend.

More than 1,500 leaflets were distributed around local homes, alerting residents to the aims of the operation and inviting them to the PACT locations.

Key messages were projected on the side of public buildings and officers were on hand to answer questions and hear about any community concerns.

PCSO Steven Atherton, of the neighbourhood policing team, said: “Throughout the winter, we conducted high visibility foot patrols in areas suffering from a rise in burglary, as well as some covert patrols guided by intelligence.

“Burglary victims were revisited by the neighbourhood policing team and were offered both general crime prevention advice and the use of ‘Smart Water’, a security marking system.

“We made a push to generate interest in our Neighbourhood Watch schemes and made many referrals.”

Compared with the same three months the previous year, burglaries to house dwellings reduced from 29 to 20, a fall of 31-per cent.

Over the same period there were four attempted house burglaries, compared to five the previous winter.

“We received encouraging feedback from victims who really appreciated what we were doing.

“And known criminals were also visited regularly throughout the winter to remind them that police were watching them,” added PCSO Atherton.

Anyone wanting to report concerns or speak to the neighbourhood team can do so by ringing the force’s 101 non-emergency number and ask for the Stanley office.

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