Armed officers brought in to help target burglaries in South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire Police is shortening its training sessions and “cutting down everything we don’t need to do” in order to give officers more time on the streets tackling the county’s high rates of acquisitive crime.

The force, which admits it is “a step behind” other parts of the country for its burglary and vehicle crime rates, has already made dozens of arrests since it launched Operation Lockdown at the start of this month.

But Chief Inspector Iain Chorlton, who is leading the operation, said every available resource would be put into tackling the problem in a bid to cut the overall crime rate by 10 per cent and house burglaries by 31 per cent by the end of March.

He said: “We have got the people who normally patrol the motorways, they are on estates, we will have armed response vehicles doing burglary patrols, we will have dog handlers checking house doors. Every resource we are getting we will put into these crime types. We are trying to cut down everything we don’t need to do and doing the bare minimum of everything else so we can get out and give this a kick.”

Mr Chorlton said the operation “won’t change what the bobbies do on the ground, it changes the way we configure the force to allow the bobbies to their job smarter and better”.

Figures released last week revealed that burglary rose by nine per cent in South Yorkshire to 16,661 offences in the year to June. Rates of house burglary and vehicle crime also rose between April and October compared with the same period last year, though the number of offences has been falling since Operation Lockdown was launched.

Mr Chorlton said the force saw an unprecedented rise in such offences between October 2012 and February this year due to the darker nights and people leaving Christmas presents unprotected.

He said: “That is down to some motivated individuals in Sheffield and some vulnerabilities. The whole things is vulnerability, people leaving things in cars and not locking their doors.”

A week of action currently taking place to tackle vehicle crime has seen ‘sting’ vehicles kitted out with cameras and trackable computers to catch thieves.

Officers are carrying out high-profile patrols and issuing crime prevention advice to cut the high numbers of cars left unlocked or with belongings on display.

Anyone with information on burglary and car crime should call South Yorkshire Police’s non-emergency number 101.