Police unit set up to tackle burglaries

The dedicated team of both officers and support staff has been set up as part of North Yorkshire Police’s year-long burglary crackdown, dubbed Operation Haven.

Officers will focus their efforts on targeting burglary hotspots as well as monitoring known offenders who have recently been released from prison.

North Yorkshire Police is liaising closely with neighbouring forces to share intelligence and local patrols are being stepped up to deter criminals from targeting the county.

Many burglaries are being committed by criminals travelling from across the North of England and a key aim of the crackdown is to thwart these offenders by monitoring their movements closely.

Detective Chief Inspector Heather Pearson, who is leading Operation Haven, said: “The key objectives of the campaign are to ensure that we have fewer victims of crime, more offenders brought to justice, and therefore less offenders at liberty to subject our communities to the personal trauma that offences of this nature cause.

“The dedicated team have the responsibility to maximise arrest and disruption opportunities with particular focus on travelling criminals who target our communities.”

Operation Haven has led to a 10 per cent fall in domestic break-ins since its launch in May. But one of the biggest concerns is over so-called two-in-one burglaries, where offenders break into a property and steal car keys before driving off in the vehicle.

Harrogate, York and Selby have historically been hardest hit, although detectives stressed the offences are happening across the county. A total of 594 of the offences have been reported in North Yorkshire between October 2008, and August this year.

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