Perth’s police chief has hit back at recent crime figures he feels painted the area in a bad light.
Statistics revealed by The Courier suggested the detection rate for housebreakings in Perth City North council ward was 39.7% compared to 88.9% in Perth City South.
The figures for council wards in Tayside and Fife also showed that 53.3% of criminals in Blairgowrie and the Glens were caught by police, while just 3.6% were apprehended in the Strathearn area.
Chief Inspector Ian Scott, area commander for Perth and Kinross, said: “The analysts mention 28 crimes in Strathearn, but there were actually four domestic housebreakings here which were a mixture of sheds and caravans and 19 of this total were commercial premises, and when the statistics go into the difference between Perth South and North, some of these were out in the Inveralmond Industrial Estate area so you have to be cautious.”
He continued: “The public regard housebreaking as getting their home broken into and that’s the focus of our activity.
“What we classify as housebreaking within the police is a range of crimes similar to sexual assault.
“Not to diminish any sexual assault, but it goes from rape to somebody slapping a bottom and housebreaking is to some degree the same, in that someone’s house getting broken into is a horrendous crime that can really affect people, but at the other end of the scale you have a garden shed getting broken into and a strimmer being stolen.
“That is annoying and an inconvenience it shouldn’t happen and will be investigated but we have to be careful in comparing apples and oranges.”
He continued: “The other thing is if you have a house and a separate garage, then the house gets broken into it’s a dwelling house crime, but if your garage gets broken into it’s non-dwelling house crime.
“However, if your garage is connected to your house depending on whether it’s got an internal door and it gets broken into, that’s a domestic crime, and on the back of that, you have shop premises and building premises so it’s dangerous to say all housebreakings are in one area, due to these differences.
“There has been a long-term decline in the number of break-ins to people’s houses, which remains a focus for Police Scotland.
“We do go through every crime every day but we do get targeted by criminals locally or out of the area and eventually you get a lead or detection opportunity.
“Criminals tend to use the same modus operandi so we get search warrants and it shows us there is property stolen from various locations, so your detection rate has maybe gone from zero to 100%, so you have to put some context to this.”