Crime at 'historically low level' in Offaly

CRIME rates in Offaly were down across a number of offences in the county for the fourth quarter of 2022 but were up in others.

Reporting to a recentJoint Policing Committee meeting, Chief Supt John Scanlan said, ''we expected that when Covid finished there would be an impact especially around burglaries but thankfully we haven't seen that.''

There was a reduction in aggravated burglaries from three in quarter 4 of 2021 to two for the same period in 2022.

''All of these have been detected and the offenders are being brought before the court,'' he said

Non aggravated burglaries were down from 69 to 34 for the same period. '

'It is encouraging that our rate of burglaries and breaking into homes is down, but for those 34 people it doesn't really matter that it is down. We constantly ask for vigilance, we are saying there are three dynamics to burglaries: there are criminals who travel around the country committing these crimes. There are those who are from other jurisdictions who come in here. We had a spate of it in the last couple of weeks. They were intercepted and they are before the courts. We have burglary tourism in the country. But again the story of Offaly is encouraging. Crime is going down, down, down,'' said the chief superintendent.

There were no robberies from a person in quarter 4 of 2022 or 2021

'Theft Other' went up from 21 to 43 for the fourth quarter of 2022. The Chief Superintendent said that 'Theft Other' has a complicated factor. He explained that the crime could be driving off from a garage without paying for petrol to the theft of farm machinery.

''We have to be careful here, especially with drive off's off from garages. Some people accidentally drive away.'' he said. "We are receiving batch reporting from some of the nationalised service stations. When they go back over their CCTV over a period, we are finding that simply a child in a car distracts a person when filling petrol or diesel and they unintentionally drive off. Having said that some people fill up their cars for criminal activity and they are driving off.''

Theft from and MPV went up from 16 to 23.

The unauthorised taking of a pedal cycle was up from two to eight.

Unauthorised taking of a vehicle went down from 13 for quarter 4 of 2021 to nine for the same period in 2022. Overall property crime was down from 189 to 186

Assaults causing harm went up from 32 in quarter 4 of 2021 to 33 for the same period in 2022.

Resisting a peace officer went down from seven to one.

Minor Assaults went up from 51 to 68.

Harassment rose from three to seven.

Menacing phone calls were up one to four.

Murder, threats to kill or cause serious harm were down from 15 to five.

''I'm very concerned about the last category in that sometimes it can have the most extreme version of that, or it can be the most minor version, a simple threat, not that that's not harmful, but it goes across a significant spectrum of crime. Overall those figures are reasonably constant. Sometimes it's a feature of our night time economy opening up,'' said Chief Superintendent Scanlan.

''Crime is down in general in Offaly it's at historically low levels,'' said the Chief Superintendent Scanlan.