Crime up in Echuca, but police say they are winning

However, Campaspe police Inspector Anthony Vanderzalm sees the newly released crime statistics for the past 12 months as a positive.

“Although the overall number of offences has risen, it does not mean we are losing any battles here,” he said.

“What it means is that all our members are working extremely hard out there in the community and arresting and processing more and more offenders with more offences.

“I’m am really pleased to see local police making some serious inroads in reducing the amount of crime around the area, particularly around some of our volume crime categories, which is made up of assault (non-family violence), residential burglaries, theft of and from motor vehicle, and other theft.”

While residential burglaries have remained steady at 136, break-ins are still occurring at a rate of more than two a week.

Insp. Vanderzalm said although burglaries were always a concern, police were solving them at a high rate.

“Through our offender management practices and regular targeting of persons of interest, we are seeing some good results with offenders being charged with burglary,” he said.

“Over the past several months, we have been maturing our offender management practices and tasking processes by working with the Campaspe Criminal Investigations Unit.

“We have been seeing some fantastic results and immediate reductions in crime in the area after apprehending key persons of interest who have been responsible for committing a large amount of offences over a relatively short period of time.”

Insp. Vanderzalm said in January and February, police achieved its lowest volume crime rate in more than three years.

“This doesn’t just happen. It happens because your local front-line police and specialist police units around Campaspe are committed to working hard to make the community a safer place for everybody,” he said.

Insp. Vanderzalm said police’s management practices around recidivist offenders and actively monitoring their compliance of bail conditions had contributed to the 58 per cent rise in bail breaches.

“If an offender is granted bail with a condition to reside at a particular address between certain times of the day and or night, we monitor that,” he said.

“Police will attend at an offender’s premises unannounced and perform a bail compliance check. If the offender is not present as per their bail conditions, they are arrested at a later date and charged.

“I have no doubt this process disrupts our recidivist offenders’ criminal activities.”When it comes to drug crime, trafficking has gone up by 10 to 17 offences and possession from 44 to 74.

“If police have a dedicated drug tasking unit to focus on drug-related crime, it makes sense the more offenders we process the more offences we generate,” Insp Vanderzalm said.

“That being said, I would like to see this rise even further because what it means is that we are our catching these people and holding them accountable.”