By Casey Neill
Crime has dropped dramatically in Greater Dandenong over the past 12 months, latest figures show.
The Crime Statistics Agency released data for last year on Thursday 15 March.
It showed a 12 per cent drop in recorded offences for Greater Dandenong, equating to a 14 per cent drop per 100,000 population.
Greater Dandenong Local Area Commander Inspector Mark Langhorn said everything was tracking well for the municipality.
“I think the community is feeling a bit safer out there,” he said.
“That’s not something that we can rest on.
“There’s plenty of room for more reductions.
“Our focus is still on preention and being proactive.
“The community has a role in that.
“If they’re suspicious about something or concerned about something, call triple-zero or call their local station.
Insp Langhorn said the drop in crime state-wide was the biggest since 1994 and the third quarter in a row there’d been a decrease.
He said the downward turn in Greater Dandenong followed a decrease for the same period the previous year, and there were reductions in all suburbs.
“Noble Park was fairly consistent with only about 50 less offences for the year,” he said.
“There’s been some bigger drops across Dandenong as a whole.
“We’ll continue to focus on trying to reduce the crimes against the person category.
“That’s our major focus – assaults and robberies, things like that.”
Raw offences in that category increased from 3153 to 3244.
“The offences category that hurts us the most is theft,” he said.
The number of thefts did decrease, from 6567 raw offences to 5442, but the rate per 100,000 population grew from 524.6 to 837.8.
Burglary and break and enter crimes dropped from 2033 incidents to 1349 – the lowest level in at least 10 years.
Insp Langhorn said that property crimes still made up the bulk of the statistics.
“Of the 11,414 (per 100,000 population) over 9000 are property related offences,” he said.
He said some success had come from targeting recidivist offenders using enforcement tools around bail and curfews.
“And we’ve got a very strong focus on drugs across the whole division, being Greater Dandenong, Casey and Cardinia.
“With that focus, that’s having an impact on some of those related type-crimes.
“That’s where some of the greater gains are coming from.”
