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A Bloemfontein security company reported an increase in house burglaries and opportunistic crimes across the Free State during the festive season.
Gavin Benbrook, general manager of Defensor, said many families returned from holidays to find their homes had been broken into, often because valuable assets had been left unprotected.
“The trend this year, we’ve seen a marked increase in opportunistic crimes of people breaking into garages to steal garden equipment and stuff lying around in the yards that’s being stolen, that’s what we’re seeing now and also the normal cable theft that the guys are definitely after, so they’re pulling copper wire out of the houses and pipes and taps.”
While official crime statistics for the festive season have not yet been released, the Free State police have also observed an increase in house burglaries.
Police spokesperson Motantsi Makhele urged residents to make use of the empty house register available at all police stations to inform authorities when they are gone.
“The other thing we advised is that during the festive season at each police station we have a register called an empty house register – this is a register that people use to patrol those houses where owners have reported that they will not be home. So most of the people don’t know about this, we tried to point out to them that at every police station there is an empty house register and during the night when it is quiet, the patrollers will take the book, they will go to the house to look around,” says Makhele.
He added that home security does not have to be expensive, but every household should apply some form of preventive measure to reduce the risk of burglaries.
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