Residential break and enters down in 2017

It’s been a better year for homeowners and their property.

The number of residential break and enters has dropped in 2017 for the first time since the downturn took hold in Calgary.

The five year average from 2012 to 2016 was 416 break and enters per month but over the last seven months it was just 301.

In 2016 it was 408, in 2015 it was 477 and there were 364 per month in 2014.

Police Chief Roger Chaffin said they’ve been able to move around resources to help tackle the problem.

“Reorganizing our intelligence apparatus, reconstituting some of these areas under our RTOC (Real Time Operations Centre) environment and bringing people together to focus on offender management strategies,” he explained.

But it has been challenging: 44 of the 61 people charged in break and enters this year have been released on conditions they don’t always follow.

“Following people immediately upon a release going back out and re-offending again, and our capacity to follow each and every person is constrained,” said Chaffin who admitted there is some concern about whether or not they’ll be able to stay ahead of it.

“It’s very labour intensive, the volume of work is incredibly high. We’re having some short term successes but obviously for the community and for the service our goal is can we sustain that over a longer period of time?” he said.

There was a small jump in break-ins in May but it’s yet to be seen if that’s a one off or if the numbers will start to trend in the wrong direction again.

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