End-of-year crime data has revealed Echuca remains the hub of criminal activity in Campaspe Shire.
“The majority of the offences are occurring in Echuca, which is no surprise because we’re the biggest town within the LGA,” Campaspe police Inspector Dave Bowler said.
With a 19.7 per cent increase in criminal incidents, theft has been noted as a particular area of concern by Inspector Bowler.
“Obviously, each area has their own unique nuances of crime that affect them,” he said.
“We can see from our crime data that theft is an issue for us. So that’s our second-highest sub offence, with breach of orders being the highest.”
This data didn’t surprise Inspector Bowler, who said officers had been focusing on their persons of interest.
“With the current fiscal environment and the challenges that people are facing, we’re starting to see an increase in thefts as people struggle to make ends meet. We’re seeing theft of petrol, theft from shops, farm crime thefts and so forth,” he said.
“But we’re making sure that we’re holding our offenders to account. So if there are orders in place, whether they be court-imposed orders or intervention orders, we’re doing proactive compliance checks to make sure that our offenders are abiding by these orders.”
Inspector Bowler is heartened by the decline in family violence.
“What’s really pleasing to see is that our family violence incidents are down 10.5 per cent compared to the previous year,” he said.
“Some of that can be attributed to the fact that we saw an increase during COVID and the restrictions because people were at home and locked up and had lots of community stress.
“But what I will say, even with the decrease, it’s still way too high. We’ve had 776 family violence incidents, and that’s 776 too many.”
Inspector Bowler said people should protect themselves by ensuring bikes were put away, cars were locked and keys weren’t left in easy-to-find spots.
“It’s just about making sure that we’re minimising those opportunities for you to become a victim,” he said.