Burglaries up by 40% last year

The number of burglaries in the Westmeath Garda Division rose by almost 40 per cent last year.

That’s according to new garda statistics, which revealed that up until the end of the third quarter of last year there were 187 reported burglaries in the county compared to 136 at the end of the same period in 2020, an increase of 38 per cent.

The Athlone District experienced a 61 per cent increase in the number of reported burglaries in the first nine months of last year.

In total, there were 106 burglaries compared to 66 in 2020, while in the Mullingar District there were 81, a year on year increase of 11 (+16 per cent).

Speaking at the first Joint Policing Committee of 2022, Chief Superintendent Fergus Healy said that as restrictions were lifted last year, crime levels drifted back to “normal patterns”. However, he also noted that the number of crimes reported locally in 2021 was less than in the years before the pandemic.

Cllr Emily Wallace said that many people have spent a lot of the last two years working from home and have got complacent when it comes to crime prevention measures. She proposed that the gardaí and Westmeath County Council run a new “awareness campaign on what people need to do to safeguard their property and how to join their local text alert groups”.

“Crime is still happening, especially in rural Ireland, and we have people living on their own and possibly not with the same access to family members who would have been dropping in and out on a daily basis.”

The number of report thefts from vehicles rose from 74 in the first nine months of 2020 to 107 during the same period last year, an increase of 45 per cent.

In the Mullingar District, there was a 68 per cent increase up from 38 reported incidents in 2020 to 64 last year, while in the Athlone District there were 43 (+7, 19 per cent) incidents in 2021 compared to 36 the year before.

Cllr Tom Farrell wondered if the spike could be attributed to organised crime gangs targeting certain towns before moving on.

Chief Supt Fergus Healy said that criminals moving from town was a major factor in the rise of thefts from vehicles last year.

“We had a series of incidents where catalytic converters were taken from vehicles. It was being organised on a national level by organised crime groups who were stealing catalytic converters from vehicles and selling them then. You may have seen on news reports that An Garda Síochána had serious detections and this problem seems to have waned a bit as a result. “I could say looking at the data [on thefts from vehicles] that it was the main contributing factor,” he said.