Updated Police report a rise in burglaries, and garage and shed break-ins "especially around the Bitterne Park area of Southampton, while crime in the city has gone up for the sixth year in a row.
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PCSO Walker wrote on the Southampton Cops Facebook page last week:
"Southampton North Neighbourhood Team would like our followers to be read the Crime Prevention advice below in relation to Burglaries and Garage and Shed Breaks. We are receiving increased reports relating to these crimes especially around the Bitterne Park area of Southampton."
Prevention advice is also offered on the page: you can read the post in full on Facebook.
Meanwhile the Local Democracy Reporting Service has reported today (Jan 18) that crime in Southampton has gone up for the sixth year in a row.
LDRS reporter Maria Zaccaro wrote: "Drug and sexual offences as well as domestic violence, modern slavery and cruelty to children were the offences to have increased the most between March 2019 and March 2020.
"The figures published by Southampton City Council show that violent crime, drug related crime and hate crime also went up over the same period of time.
"But other offences such as arson and burglary went down.
"City leaders said the data can also mean an increase in public confidence in reporting incidents to the police."
Update 19/1/21: Following publication Sarah Storton from Northfield Road contacted us to say that she'd suffered a couple of shed break-ins.
She said: "Before Christmas had our shed broken into and 2 bikes stolen. Due to this we have installed a ring camera and lights in our garden but Saturday night was woken by an alert on our phone we woke and found 3 young males all dressed in black all with face masks on, 2 outside our garden and one in our garden blue/black coat, Adidas’s tracksuit bottoms, black and white Nike trainers. He had attempted to break into the shed as we have it on the cctv,our shed is particularly damaged where he tried to get in, luckily as we were woken we scared them off before they had chance to actually get Into the shed and take anything but it’s the 2nd time in 6 weeks."
She said she'd spoken to neighbours and believes the same people may have tried to break into garages.
"It has been reported to the police but [wanted] to let people know to be on [their] guard!"