The Times is partnering with our local police to give them a platform to share important messages with our readers around crime-prevention and community safety. Here’s the latest column from Sergeant Brett Meale of Howick Police.
Thefts from motor vehicles continues to be one of the higher reported offences in Counties Manukau East.
The sad reality is there are criminals out there who move about, generally under the cover of darkness, looking for vehicles to break into.
While it would be nice to live as we did in years gone by, where we were able to leave our vehicles unlocked in driveways, times have changed.
We really need to heed the messages around always locking our vehicles, never leaving any valuables in view within them.
If you cannot remove items from your vehicles, ensure they are out of sight.
We’ve recently seen a higher proportion of tradies’ vehicles being targeted.
Many tradies have lost thousands of dollars’ worth of tools, something which can affect their ongoing work, insurances and of course, finances.
Disturbingly, the vehicles targeted have often been parked in the victim’s driveway, or very close to their house.
If you’re a tradie who needs to leave tools in a vehicle, consider having an alarm installed.
Ideally, leave your vehicle locked in a garage, or if this is not possible consider installing sensor lights or even CCTV cameras in an area of your property that you leave your vehicle overnight.
We would also recommend you engrave or mark your tools with your driver’s licence number or something similar that might allow us to identify them as yours, should we recover them in the future.
As I mentioned earlier, most of these offences occur during the hours of darkness, often in the early hours of the morning.
Should you hear or see anything suspicious at all around your property or out on the street, please call us on 111.
Safely observe any persons and try and get a description of them, and the direction for which you last saw them heading.
Please stay inside as police dogs or the police helicopter enjoy nothing better than tracking offenders when the streets are quiet.
