At least a dozen cars were broken into at Hanwood over the last weekend, the latest in a string of thefts that have hit the area.
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Inspector John Wadsworth from Griffith police said the cars all had small amounts of cash or valuables stolen from them.
Most concerning however, was that many of the cars were unlocked, offering no resistance to the thieves whatsoever.
“In some instances entry has been gained by force but in quite a few entry has been gained by opening a door that was unlocked,” Inspector Wadsworth said.
“We live in a town where we’re fortunate enough not to have major incidence of crimes and people get complacent and don’t lock their car.”
Inspector Wadsworth said protecting yourself from this sort of crime was as simple as making sure your car was locked with nothing visible inside that thieves would want.
“But at the end of the day if you see something suspicious in your area we’ll go out there and investigate,” he said.
“If you are unfortunate enough to have your car broken into, always think about any forensic things we may be doing to that vehicle, so don’t get in there and be grabbing at things because there might be fingerprints left on that vehicle.”
He described the thieves as “opportunists” and wanted the community to “get together and keep an eye on each other, and if you see anything suspicious call the cops.
“That’s what we’re there for,” he said.
Inspector Wadsworth was also concerned that crimes were not being reported to police first, saying that police resources were getting tied up chasing down social media leads.
“It’s time wasting for our staff to go through social media sites to try and find information if the public can easily ring us up and tell us what they know.
“What you notice more and more is if a business is broken into there’s all this commentary about who they think did it and why and you think to yourself ‘well why don’t you ring the cops?’”
He said it was important that criminal activity be reported to police or Crime Stoppers, where people can remain anonymous.
“We live here too, so we don’t want this going on in the community just as much as any one else.”
The Area News contacted the owners of the Griffith Buy Swap Sell page on Facebook, who said they had posted a video of three thieves to the Leeton Thumbs Up Thumbs Down page and had received messages identifying the thieves, but is unclear if this information was given to police.
According to NRMA, the most stolen items were lightweight, easy to grab and easy to pawn, such as wallets, jewellery, phones, tablets and laptops.