Violence against the person has seen a troubling rise in Moira Shire in the 12 months ending June 30, 2023 with an increase of 30% of family incidents, other parties and affected family members.
Twelve months’ worth of police and victim reports were released by the Crime Statistics Agency recently with the statistics revealing that the Moira Local Government Area (LGA) experienced 624 domestic violence cases in 2023 compared to 480 in 2022.
Moira Shire overall also experienced an increase of 14.1% of annual criminal incidents than the same period last year.
In Yarrawonga alone, there was 372 criminal incidents recorded in the 2023 period, 42 up on the 330 incidents recorded in 2022.
Most of these were relating to breach family violence order, criminal damage, steal from motor vehicle and residential non-aggravated burglary.
There were 97 incidents of theft in Yarrawonga, up from 82 in 2022, 54 cases of assault compared to 38 in 2022, 30 cases of property damage compared to 24 in 2022 and 14 cases of burglary/ break and enter, down from 19 in 2022.
Across the Moira Shire in 2022, there were 1449 criminal incidents recorded and in 2023 there were 1653 incidents.
In a positive sign, victim reporting was up with an increase of 29.6% with 1220 reported for 2023 while in 2022, 941 reports were made.
Theft was the highest principal offence with assault and related offences following closely behind while property damage and burglary/break and enter rounded out the figures.
Over the past decade from 2013 – 2023 in the Moira Shire, criminal incidents have increased from 1045 in 2013 to 1653 in 2023, 1301 offences were recorded in 2013 compared to 2361 in 2023, 837 victim reports were recorded in 2013 compared to 1220 in 2023 and 201 family incidents were recorded in 2014 with a rise to 352 in 2023.
Yarrawonga Police Senior Sergeant Nathan Ractliffe acknowledged figures have increased in the Moira Shire region and said that this is partly due to more people now coming forward to report incidents.
“There’s been some little pockets of trouble. We have had some areas where they have probably been hit harder than normal but look yes there has been an increase but what I can say is that there has been a great resolve rate,” Snr Sgt Ractliffe said.
“That means the crime has been committed but we are holding people to account, we have been able to process offenders to those offences.
“I think the figures say there has been an increase and that’s not good in any environment but our clean up/ resolve rate is really good so that sort of combats that.
“In terms of thefts and burglaries etc, I think the only real drive is the serial thefts where you might have a spate of four or five thefts in a couple of streets, you might have thefts of or from motor vehicles and that hurts us in terms of where statistics are involved.
“In terms of an increase in victim reporting, it depends on how you twist the data. If we have people ringing the police, then that is a good thing.
“Making it easier for people to report crimes online, you are going to get the increases. With online reporting and the police assistance line, it is always going to increase numbers because it is easier for people to report an offence and they feel more comfortable.
“That is probably a driver of the increase.
“Absolutely it is a positive to have more people reporting. I want people to ring the police as much as they can because one, we want to provide a safe community and two, we want to know what is going on.
“One report may link to five others. If they don’t report, we may miss it.
“It works hand in hand. Yes, it doesn’t look good but what it does is give a true reflection to what is actually happening in the community.”
Snr Sgt Ractliffe acknowledged that family violence is probably local police’s biggest trending offence at the moment as police spend a lot of time responding to family violence.
“These can be anything from a verbal dispute between parent and child to husband and wife or the high end offending where you have serial offenders,” Snr Sgt Ractliffe said.
“That does drive the figures but having said that, the more reports we get for family violence, the better we are at holding family violence perpetrators to account.
“Yes there is probably an increase in numbers and as our population grows in Moira and Yarrawonga, our stats are going to increase as well.
“But what I do not want to see is a substantial increase. We have to start to look at what is going on.
“The family violence unit out of Wangaratta have had a number of proactive operations in relation to targeting recidivous offenders. So what they’ve been doing is going back and investigating perpetrators and the last few relationships they’ve had, getting statements from victims who never reported violence.
“That also adds to the increase. There have been a lot of proactive policing in that space.”
Snr Sgt Ractliffe said that his message to the community has always been the same. That police don’t know what is going on unless people tell them and for people to be more proactive in their own safety.
“We want to be proactive with people reporting crimes and suspicious behaviour so we can provide a more poignant service where it needs to be, instead of just driving around aimlessly,” Snr Sgt Ractliffe said.
“We want to target high locations. Sometimes a call about one crime can solve 30.
“Country people are pretty trustworthy so we just want those people who are victims to do little things that will put a dampener on that type of offending.
“The second is to just be safe and secure. Lock your car, lock your house, take the steps to do your own prevention. Not just relying on police to catch them. It is just that easy stuff that hurts on the peripheral.
“We want people to be more proactive with their own safety and security.”
Across Victoria in the year ending June 2023 the criminal incident rate rose 7.1% to 5,504.7 per 100,000 Victorians, as did the number of incidents, up 9.3% to 371,961 incidents.
Unfortunately, alleged offender incidents increased once again by a substantial amount, 9.8% to 167,394 in the last 12 months.
Crime Statictics Agency Chief Statistician Fiona Dowsley said that increases in acquisitive offence types, particularly theft offences, are a major contributor to the upward trends observed in recorded crime measures in the last 12 months.
“Despite an increase in theft offence types across all recorded crime measures these numbers remain below pre-pandemic peaks recorded in 2020,” Ms Dowsley said.
Across the nation, one of the biggest crimes individuals have fallen victim to has been financial scams.
According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Scamwatch (service that provides information to consumers and small businesses about how to recognise, avoid and report scams), Australians lost a record $3.1 billion to scams in 2022, an 80 per cent increase on total losses recorded in 2021.
Scamwatch received 239,237 scam reports last year, a 16.5 per cent drop on the number of reports received in 2021.
However, despite fewer reports to Scamwatch, losses experienced by each victim rose by more than 50 per cent last year, to an average of almost $20,000.
Alarming new tactics have been used including impersonating official phone numbers and websites of legitimate organistions, making it incredibly difficult to detect with an explosion of reported losses to phishing scams in the past year, such as “Hi Mum” and Toll/Linkt text scams, which skyrocketed by 469 per cent to $24.6 million in 2022.
If you witness any crime, contact local police at Yarrawonga on 5744 3641, Mulwala Police on 5743 8099, Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or Cobram CIU on 5871 1977. For emergencies contact 000.
If you become a victim of any scams firstly contact your financial institution and the Police.
The Victoria Police website also has valuable crime prevention tips, party safe registration, firearms applications and forms as well as lots of other useful data for the community so visit police.vic.gov.au for more information.
