South Yorkshire Police report crime spike in Treeton, Aston and Swallownest - with 96 car thefts in past year

Car owners are bound to be aware of the rising threat of motor thefts across the country, and the southern wards of Rotherham - Holderness and Rother Vale - are no exception.

In Treeton, Aston and Swallownest, figures from South Yorkshire Police have confirmed that a total of 96 vehicles were stolen between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023. However, in 81 of these incidents, the case has been closed under Outcome 18, meaning no suspect was identified. Only one case saw a suspect charged or summonsed, although a further five investigations were ongoing at the time the data was collected.

Detective Chief Inspector Sam Blakemore, of the force’s Rotherham division, has stated that a ‘spike’ in residential burglaries across Treeton, Aston and Swallownest answered for 20 of these car thefts.

South Yorkshire Police has made a commitment to attend every home burglary report in the county to increase the chances of suspects being caught, and cases being solved. Despite this, a total of 81 residential burglaries were reported in these areas between April 2022 and March 2023, and only one person was charged or summonsed. Some 71 incidents were finalised as Outcome 18.

DCI Blakemore said: “There has been a spike in burglaries in those particular areas certainly over the past year, and that does include what we refer to as two-in-one burglaries, where a vehicle is stolen.

“We believe that is partly down to the vulnerability of the location because of the transport networks around there - it’s easily accessible from other areas. It’s common for people to travel from other areas to commit crime, and we tend to see on one night we might get four or five or more burglaries committed in one particular area, and then it moves on to another area.

“But in Rotherham as a whole, we have had a 22 per cent reduction in residential burglaries in the last two quarters of the last financial year. So actually the total burglaries across Rotherham decreased from 463 in the first two quarters, to 363. A 22 per cent reduction is notable in my view.”

Nationally, the cost-of-living crisis is thought to have been a driver behind crime, with a surge of car thefts coinciding with the increased living costs.

High-value cars are at risk of theft such as BMWs and Land Rovers, and an increase in technology has made it easier than ever to target keyless entry vehicles, where a thief can use a relay box to pick up the signal of car keys that are inside people’s homes and then replicate that signal to steal the car.

It is not mandatory for South Yorkshire Police to log the make and model of cars stolen, but those logged in the system show six Land Rovers, four Range Rovers, five Audis, and a Chrysler 300C have been stolen. The make in highest demand is Ford, with a total of 31 reported missing.

To combat the recent spike in car theft and residential burglaries, DCI Blakemore said a new neighbourhood crime team was set up in November with a detective sergeant and a team of investigators dedicated to acquisitive crime, which has shown ‘really good results’.

A review in May found that the NCT saw a total of 54 prisoners processed by the team, 29 of which were relating to burglaries, and 21 were charged and remanded for acquisitive type offences.

DCI Blakemore said: “If you have dedicated resources that’s sole focus is one crime, that will really make an impact and they can look at different ways and innovations they can come up with to really target that type of criminality, and we’ve really found here that that team has been really quite effective.

“Whilst there are numerous different priorities that as an organisation we’ve got to try and address in Rotherham, as a victim in the past of a residential burglary, it’s a really impactful crime. It is a horrible thing to know somebody has been in your house, and I’m really pleased by the impact the neighbourhood crime team has had and will continue to have.

“It’s a constant balance about how we use the limited resources we have, but my view is that this is something we should be really prioritising.”

Superintendent Pete Thorp, South Yorkshire Police’s lead for burglary, said public engagement is another priority, including through the use of social media and public meetings.

He said: “Sometimes the fear of crime is more prevalent than the crime itself, so we want to actually highlight the results we’re having, highlight the resources we’re putting into it, and give that public reassurance, but also spread messages about crime prevention.

"We would encourage anyone to report every burglary to us – if that means our reported burglary rate goes up, that might not be a terrible thing because at least we know that everybody has the confidence to report that crime to us. We have that commitment that if your home is burgled then we will come and see you. Then we’ve got a lot of different mechanisms in the background to support how we investigate that to make sure we catch that criminal.

“When we look at some of the outcome rates that we’re achieving at the minute, are they where they want to be? Probably not, if we’re really honest. We need to start seeing the improvements that we’ve started seeing in the last few months in terms of some of those reductions, coupled with the plan we have around improving the quality of our investigations."

A public meeting with South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Dr Alan Billings and Rother Valley MP Alexander Stafford MP will be held tonight (June 29). Residents will have the opportunity to discuss crime, burglaries, security and crime prevention, at Treeton Baptist Church, on Station Road, at 7pm.