Most people will look back on February 2018 as a month when Blantyre experienced a significant crime spree. Our ‘heat map’ attached shows the locations of crime related messages we’ve received over the last 28 days and it paints ‘a sorry picture’.
Vehicle Crime in blue, Robberies and Assaults in purple, House intrusions in red and attempted break-ins or handles tried in orange dots.
This is of course, only the crime that people have bothered to share with us. Perhaps there were more incidents? What’s almost certain is that many of these, especially the attempted house breaks-ins is the work of one or a couple of individuals, intent on continuing their blatant disregard for homeowners. Police, also are of the opinion that just a couple of people are responsible for these crimes and have descriptions of people wanted for questioning.
Police Intervention
Blantyre, like most places has its fair share of crime and whilst this pattern may be concerning, we, as a charity news page…. don’t have the full picture. We DON’T have access to police arrests, leads, detective work, breakthroughs, surveillance and their accomplishments relating to crime, so our story is one sided, with the police action a countering reassurance for all. We’ve been invited along to a Police meeting in the near future to discuss crime in Blantyre and will keep you posted.
Polled
Realising at the start of the month that posting about frequent house break-ins could potentially frighten people, we decided straight away to poll our readers and 97% of you wanted us to continue to place crime alerts and stories on the page, asap when incidents happen. In some cases, we’ve been able to provide updates within 15 minutes! Over the last 6 months especially, our network of contacts and people willing to share information has grown considerably keeping this page as “up to the minute” as possible.
Commitment going forward
February has caused me to think carefully about how much crime will be reported here in future. After all, this is just a local charity newspage. We can’t and do NOT intend to compete with official media news outlets. With a full time job, it’s only possible for me to update first thing in the morning, on coffee breaks, lunchtimes and evenings when home. As a strict rule, I never let social media or this page interfere with livelihood and work commitments. However, to bring such frequent, contemporary news (and give me back some spare time), I have to accept that this page needs further admin assistance. Not a bad thing, as that would mean posts can appear during normal working hours too . Having help to run this page also assists other linked ventures like our new glossy magazine coming out at the end of March, and fundraising work.
We thank you for your support and all your latest feedback, in the hope it will enhance and make this page as best as it possibly can be. Stay safe folks, be vigilant, report anything suspicious and hopefully police will get these thieves caught.
