Festive season crime stats drop, says Blue Security

BLUE Security released its festive season crime trends and the stats show a 37 per cent drop in the number of crime incidents reported to the company during the holiday season.

Blue Security’s operations director, Brian Jackson, said the firm’s analysis of crime statistics covered the period during 1 December 2018 to 7  January 2019. The stats were then compared to the same period in 2017/18.

According to the study, the crimes that showed the highest decrease included:
* Business armed robbery: 95 per cent
* Residential armed robbery: 92 per cent
* Assault: 77 per cent
* Hijacking: 50 per cent
* Attempted business burglary: 57 per cent
* Attempted residential housebreaking: 39 per cent

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Jackson added that, according to the crime statistics, other crimes that decreased included residential housebreaking (5 per cent), business burglary (8 per cent) and theft of motor vehicles declined by 17 per cent.

Incidents of vandalism increased by 41 per cent, trespassing by 33 per cent and the number of shootings doubled.

“While it is good news that serious crimes, such as armed robbery and hijacking, dropped during the period, it is a concern that incidental of vandalism, trespassing and shootings showed an increase,” Jackson said.

“It is important to note that these statistics include only those crime incidents reported to our company for the period which covers just around five weeks,” he said.

According to the crime report, most crimes took place in the early hours of the morning between 2am and 6am and in the evenings between 6pm and 8pm, while there were also a substantial number of incidents that took place 10am and 3pm.

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