Gympie District Police Superintendent Chris Seng
October 25, 2012

South Burnett residents live in one of the lowest crime areas in Queensland, an analysis of the annual Gympie Police District crime figures reveals.

Gympie District Police Superintendent Chris Seng told southburnett.com.au today the number of offences reported to local police was either static or slightly down when compared with the same time the previous year.

Gympie Police District includes the South Burnett, Gympie and Tin Can Bay, and forms part of the North Coast Region which yesterday reported a 1 per cent drop in annual crime, compared with an average 6 per cent rise across the State.

The District’s figures were also significantly lower than a decade ago, Supt Seng said, and followed a long period of declining crime rates.

The only area which showed a small rise in the past 12 months was property offences, in particular break-and-enters.

But it seems that burglars these days are more interested in stealing car keys than they are in taking household property.

While there were 1220 reports of unlawful entry across the Gympie District last year, there were only 119 reports of stealing from dwellings.

Shop stealing (227) and stealing from vehicles (255) both ranked much higher.

During the past financial year, a total of 21,970 offences were reported to Gympie District police, an average of 60 a day:

  • 33 per cent were property offences (7416)
  • 8 per cent were offences against the person (1915), and
  • 59 per cent were other offences ranging from trespassing through to drink driving, traffic offences and public nuisance matters (12,639).

There were 882 reports of assault and 228 sexual offences, including 34 reports of rape or attempted rape.

But there were only 12 reports of robbery, seven of armed robbery and five of unarmed robbery. Kidnapping and abduction etc. (9), stalking (4) and murder (2) also ranked low.

Traffic offences (781) were slightly down on the previous year, as was drink-driving (529) and driving while disqualified (221).

Drug offences (2594) were similar to last year and ranked only slightly ahead of an assortment of public order offences, including:

  • Being a public nuisance (744)
  • Resisting or obstructing police (548)
  • Disobeying a move on order (19), and
  • Other good order offences (1320).

Supt Seng attributes the steady decline in drink-driving to the public finally listening to anti-drink driving messages from both police and the media.

He said he was also pleased to note the number of road deaths and serious injuries in car crashes where alcohol was a factor had dropped off.

District police have been taking a consistently hard line against assault and drug offences, he said. This had resulted in a decline in assaults and also led to several significant drug suppliers being arrested over the past year.

Supt Seng said one area of police concern was the rise in break-and-enter offences, which appears to be happening nationwide.

Yesterday outgoing Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson suggested this was caused by the inability of late model cars to be hot-wired.

This had led to thieves breaking into houses in search of car keys.