Suburb hit by sharp spike in burglaries

On August 11, Snr Sgt North was a victim of burglary himself when his home was broken in to and robbed.

"I have been a burglary victim previously," he said.

"It is certainly not a pleasant feeling making you feel somewhat violated that someone has been into your home and disturbed your belongings."

Snr Sgt North said he and his wife left for work in the morning and on his return in the afternoon he discovered a side window had been smashed and a sliding door jimmied open.

"Once I entered the house I noticed that every room had been extensively ransacked and a number of items had been stolen," he said.

"Local police are still investigating the crime at the moment."

Snr Sgt North said it was important for people to adopt simple crime prevention strategies.

"Making sure all the doors and windows are locked even when they are at home, engraving their property for easy identification if it does happen to be stolen and installing security screens," he said.

"Unfortunately Kiara subdistrict is in a similar spot to a number of other areas particularly with home and commercial burglary offences and some property damage seeing increased numbers compared to the same time last year."

According to WA Police, crime increased state wide in the last year with offences committed against properties, including burglaries, rising from 10,249 reported offences last year to 12,269 this year.

In response to the increased, WA Police announced Operation Sweep last week to focus on people and places over-represented in the metropolitan area.

Snr Sgt North said there were a number of reasons why people committed crime, ranging from unemployment to drug addiction.

"The operation involves the deployment of significant police resources into targeted and identified hot spot areas in a real effort to append the offenders and drive down crime," he said.