Angus has experienced a dramatic surge in robbery and violent crime over the last year, a police report has revealed.
Robberies across the country increased 244% in the last year part of an overall 46% rise in violent crime from April 2014 to the end of March, compared to the 12 months.
Chief Superintendent Eddie Smith told the council’s police and fireand rescue sub committee inForfar on Tuesday that “the upwardspike in crimes of violence hadunfortunately continued to beevidenced in the final reporting period of this year”.
Tayside’s police commander said Angus had been accustomed to lowlevels of serious assaults and robberies and recognised the increase ofnine robberies to 31 translated into asignificant percentage increase.
Encouragingly, there was a20% improvement in catching those responsible, with robbery detection rates now at 87%.
Mr Smith said the marked rise in crime was due, in part at least, to “a broadening of the circumstances that would be recorded as a robbery”.
For example, an incident that waspreviously filed as an assault andtheft could now be recorded as arobbery.
The commander hoped committee members would see the increase “in context with the broad circumstances that encapsulate a robbery.”
There was also an increase of 39incidents in violent crime, from 84 to 123 between the 12-month timescales.
Serious assaults increased by 15% (from 39 to 45) and assaults by 11% (1,172 to 1,305), with detection rates of 91%and 83%, respectively.
He said: “It is acknowledged,however, that Angus local policing area must tackle this increase and, as such, work continues to be undertaken with the Angus violence reduction plan.”
Chief Inspector Gordon Milne, who is in charge of policing in Angus, looked beyond the statistics and said the big rise in robbery had been due in no small part to the success of Operation Luiberg.
He said: “This was a successfuloperational response to a particular cluster of crimes in the Arbroath-Forfar areas, where vulnerable and elderlygentleman were targeted and taken advantage of by certain females who were addicted to heroin. Some of the crimes were historical and some were ongoing.
“The offenders were identified and either jailed or placed on high-tariff structured deferred sentences. A number of the vulnerable men were placed in other sheltered housing or had more safeguards placed around them.”