New figures show that in just six weeks since November 1, Wagga has had 16 break and enters, 18 police pursuits, 25 reported cases of stealing from cars and one ram raid.

That equates to four stealing from cars, almost three break-ins, and three police pursuits in Wagga every week.

Making matters worse for the community, Wagga Crime Manager Detective Inspector Darren Cloake said the most frustrating part of all is a lot of these offences are coming from repeat offenders.

“It appears in most cases there is a current pattern of us arresting and charging the same ones. We lock them up, and especially for the juveniles, they get let out on bail and go straight back to crime, and then we have to start all over again,” Detective Inspector Cloake said.

When asked by The Daily Advertiser if this police frustration has been taken to the courts and magistrates themselves, Detective Inspector Cloake said, “many, many times”.

“At the end of the day, it's the community who suffers. They’re the ones getting their cars stolen, their property stolen or damaged, and police time is being diverted to chase the same offenders over and over,” he said.

Detective Inspector Cloake said at the risk of a repeat of Wagga residents mounting a protest outside the courthouse over continued bail for repeat offenders, which happened several years ago, magistrates should be dealing with children continually doing adult crimes, with adult sentences.

“It won’t happen but something has to be done as these offenders know they can get away with it, and so they keep doing it,” Detective Inspector Cloake said.

The call from Wagga’s Crime Manager is echoed by the public, particularly on social media where the most common response to crime stories covered in The Daily Advertiser is “let’s see how fast they get out on bail”. 

Operation Kingsman between Wagga, Albury and Wodonga has identified groups of people travelling to different towns from their own, usually in stolen cars, before they pick a suburb and start trawling the streets for unlocked, or easy-to-get-into cars.

“This group is going from suburb to suburb, they’re doing it en masse,” Detective Inspector Cloake said.

“The offenders are getting out of the vehicles and just trying door handles; they randomly try every door handle in the street on vehicles and houses.

“We’ve got city problems in Wagga now and you just can’t have that country attitude; criminals are taking advantage of community goodwill.”

Detective Inspector Cloake said if there is one message he wants to get out to the public, it’s being more security conscious.

“Removing your keys from the vehicle, removing your property and locking your car would be my message to people,” he said.