Make the call to keep streets safe

Photo/File.

The words of Hawke's Bay police officer Sergeant David Sutherland summed it up perfectly.

"Fantastic work."

Indeed it was, as the alert and reactive eyes and ears of the often hard-pressed police ensured they scooped up five burglars this week who had been active in four Napier neighbourhoods.

The community are those eyes and ears.

And it is the community which holds one of the major keys in keeping our streets safe and our homes secure from the aimless and uninspired whose idea of obtaining something they want is to go out and take it from someone else.

Someone who worked for it.

As Mr Sutherland said, it was the calls from suspicious residents which saw the crew in blue move in quickly to make a string of arrests.

Residents in Onekawa's Flanders Ave noticed a couple of men loitering in their street and became suspicious.

One called police and asked that someone check them out.

Police were happy to oblige and, as a result, the pair were arrested - one owning up to a series of break-ins.

In other incidents two youths (again spotted acting suspiciously by residents) were picked up in Te Awa Ave and another in Harold Holt Ave ... the latter charged with 16 break-ins.

One person ... 16 break-ins.

Catch one and you inevitably solve several, and hopefully get them out of circulation.

Police are constantly imploring members of the community to report anything they are uncomfortable about. From strange vehicles in a neighbour's driveway at a strange time to the arrival of someone on the doorstep asking if "Johnny" or "Bill" live there. Often the modus operandi of a potential burglar checking to see if anyone is home.

I have to put my hand up at this point and say that about four years ago I went about reporting something suspicious the wrong way round.

What looked like a teenager on a bike cycled up a nearby driveway ... at about 2 in the morning.

I needed to get on the phone to the police right then and there but no, I stalked outside to intercept him.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He spotted me and frantically rode off. I nearly had him but pedals are more efficient than legs.

I went back in and then called the police ... who were there in no time and who rightly asked: "Why didn't you call us straight away?"

Because I was an idiot, I willingly admitted.

But a patrol, which sped off in the direction he'd cycled away in, did nab him ... no real thanks to me though.

Like the good folk who acted smart and fast during the week to help the police, and ultimately their communities, just do it.

Make the call.