Crime in your hood: Criminals making Umina Beach home

ONE of NSW’s best beaches attracts criminals on the Central Coast to live by it. But another suburb has the highest number of burglaries. See how your suburb rates with our INTERACTIVE MAPS.

The suburb Umina Beach is home to more “people of interest” to police than any other place on the Central Coast. Picture: Mark Scott.

SUSPECTED burglars, car thieves and shoplifters on the Central Coast call one place home above all others — Umina Beach.

It may attract accolades for its pretty beach, but property crime data from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reveals the suburb is also a magnet for alleged offenders or so-called Persons of Interest (POIs). POIs may not have been convicted in court, however they have been proceeded against by the police.

Since 2011 Umina Beach was named as the home suburb for the most burglary POIs (72), shoplifters (237) and car thieves (37). It also was home to the most vandals and malicious damage POIs (218).

As for actual burglaries recorded in the same period, it was second on the list with 397 behind Wyoming (437) which was also home to 42 suspected burglars.

At the other end of the scale, burglary reports in Kincumber South and Erina Heights were in single figures.

Woy Woy and Tuggerah were commuter hubs targeted by car thieves, with more than 470 cars stolen from those two suburbs alone since 2011.

Exclusive data released to Newslocal by BOCSAR shows the top ten suburbs for home break-ins are all in Sydney’s west or south west, with the worst nine suburbs for car theft also in this region.

DWELLING BREAK AND ENTERS BY POSTCODE

From 2011 to March 2017 there were more than a thousand break-ins to dwellings in each of Blacktown, Liverpool, Parramatta and Strathfield but none of these places ranked in the top 20 home suburbs for offenders or suspects.

The suburbs break and enter POIs called home most often were: Waterloo, Redfern, Macquarie Fields, Airds and Bidwill, with Glebe topping the list for POIs in 2016 with 38 offenders.

CAR THEFTS BY POSTCODE

Former Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology president Professor Rick Sarre of the University of SA said the decline in property crime was not spread equally.

“We know criminals target homes that don’t have security alarms but that means the rich can get protection and the poor don’t,” Prof Sarre said.

Car thefts followed a similar pattern where some western Sydney suburbs saw hundreds of cars nicked, many of them Holden Commodores. Stealing from cars was also a western Sydney specialty with some places suffering more than a thousand thefts in the six years to March 2017.

Former Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology president Professor Rick Sarre

The top suburbs cars were pinched from were Bankstown, Blacktown, Liverpool, Penrith, Auburn and Greenacre. The top suburbs for car thief POIs were Marrickville, Blacktown, Glebe, Guildford, and Whalan.

Half of all cars are stolen from a home, and Holden Commodores made up five of the top 10 most stolen car models according to the national motor vehicle theft reduction council.

Three quarters of car thefts are short term and used for transport, joy-riding or committing other crimes, the council reported.

Crime Scene Section Acting Sergeant Tom Haydon at the vehicle hoist at the Gosford Police Station in 2015. Picture: Troy Snook

Prof Sarre said car thefts were down about 75 per cent over the past 20 years as the only way to steal a car these days was to break into a home to the steal keys.

“While immobilisers are typically built into cars after 2001, they offer no protection if a thief has access to your keys,” Prof Sarre said.

The most common crimes reported to NSW Police between 2011 and March 2017 were malicious damage (vandalism), stealing from cars and fraud.

CCTV stills of a vandal caught destroying Christmas lights at Umina Beach last year.

Criminologist and Senior Lecturer at Sydney University Dr Garner Clancey said criminals “generally” stay close to home and hit targets they know when doing their worst.

“The journey to crime data suggests offenders travel quite short distances, only a couple of kilometres and tend to offend in areas they know. because they have an understanding of likely chances to be caught,” Dr Clancey said.

The top Sydney suburbs for vandalism reports were: Blacktown, Sydney, Penrith, Parramatta and Campbelltown, while the top suburbs that vandal POIs called home were: Blacktown, Surry Hills, Doonside, Macquarie Fields and Liverpool.

ROBBERIES IN SOUTH WEST SYDNEY LINKED

The BOCSAR data attributes some POIs to suburbs if they were living in local jails, so the numbers for areas such as Silverwater and Goulburn are inflated and excluded from the above analysis.