South Yorkshire crime falls during lockdown

South Yorkshire crime falls during lockdown

South Yorkshire Police have reported that crime in the area has dropped by almost a fifth during lockdown.

Assistant Chief Constable Tim Forber said violent crime had dropped mainly due to pubs and clubs being closed.

The number of burglaries had also fallen due to people staying in due to restrictions put in place since March.

But, Assistant Chief Constable Forber said the force had seen an increase in fraudulent activity and shopping scams, with many of these scams being directly related to PPE or Covid-19 testing kits.

A spokesperson for The Local Democracy Reporting Service said there had been a surge in people trying to scam older people by taking advanced payments for shopping which never arrived.

This kind of scam has been seen across the country.

Speaking at the Police and Crime Commissioner meeting, he added that there had been a 19% crime drop in the past 12 weeks, with officers for South Yorkshire Police working continuously to spot new trends emerging.

“Without the night time economy, violence and incidents of a similar nature are significantly down to pretty much zero,” Forber said.

“Offences like residential burglary are down really significantly due to people being indoors a lot more.”

He added: “We have seen a shift in crime particularly around fraud increasing and we’re alive to that – we’ve got our fraud prevention officer who is always looking for opportunities to provide crime prevention advice to vulnerable victims. 

“We have a really robust fraud triage service that identifies trends and helps us target victims and criminals that we see emerging.”