Barry Soper: Burglary isn't the cops' top priority

Someone's been there in your absence and has taken stuff they can either sell on the black market or they're stealing to order. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

There are few worse feelings than opening the door to the safety of your home to see drawers pulled out and stuff strewn around the place.

Someone's been there in your absence and has taken stuff they can either sell on the black market or they're stealing to order.

The Herald published what for all of us are disturbing figures at more than a hundred and sixty burglaries a day going unresolved with the overall resolution rate for the first time below ten percent. That's fewer than ten burglaries out of a hundred being resolved.

John Key assures us the burglary rate's dropping which is cold comfort to those who've had their homes broken into.

Some areas, mainly in the sticks where people are better known to each other, are better at tracking down the criminals than others, like the big cities, where in some areas police haven't got to the bottom of even one.

Key himself has had worse luck than most having been burgled several times, a couple of times in the capital when he was a money market man when someone made off with his wife Bronagh's birthday present, a pink Honda City. He said the police chuckled at that one, obviously amused that anyone would be stupid enough to buy someone a present like that.

Bronagh's a private sort of a person and was probably secretly happy that she didn't have to be seen in a pink Honda.

On another occasion at his Parnell mansion, when Key was the leader of the opposition, he went downstairs to investigate why his burglar alarm was sounding off, thinking it probably had something to do with the weather. But it didn't, he was confronted by a burglar and as he was screaming at him, the police arrived with a dog and the man limped off to a paddy wagon.

Of course as Prime Minister his house is now impenetrable, particularly after a career crim got in and and stole all sorts of valuables.

But for the rest of us, we don't have the luxury of the diplomatic protection squad, minding our backs.

Clearly with all the other stuff that's going on, burglary isn't the cop's top priority, particularly when resources are stretched to breaking point with their budget frozen for the past six years.

Reinstated Police Minister's Judith Collins seems to be passing the police baton though, saying she's unconcerned about funding, and sounding rather motherly, said we all have a shared responsibility to make sure our properties are secure.

In other words, it would seem, we're on our own!

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