Five years of Northamptonshire Police’s specialist burglary team

• Every burglary victim gets a visit from the police
• Burglaries as a whole down by 50.2 per cent
• Residential burglaries in Northamptonshire down by 46.7 per cent
• Commercial burglaries reduced by 56.4 per cent
• 3061 fewer victims
• Prolific offenders sent to jail

Northamptonshire continues to benefit from its two specialist burglary teams with the number of burglaries continuing to be well under the figures seen before the launch of Operation Crooked in April 2019. 

Operation Crooked is the Force’s campaign to reduce burglary and as part of the operation, two burglary teams covering both the north and west of the county, sit within CID, and they ensure that every burglary victim in Northamptonshire gets a visit from the police.

In the past four years, the teams have also worked on driving up the quality of investigations, managing and progressing forensic hits more quickly, hunting down wanted people, organising police patrols in areas of concern and gathering intelligence to prevent burglaries before they happen.

Since April 1, 2019, when Operation Crooked was launched, residential burglaries have reduced by 46.7 per cent. This equates to approximately 1824 fewer victims per year.

Commercial burglaries have also gone down too with a reduction of 56.4 per cent in the past four years, equating to 1237 fewer victims.

Overall, as a whole – burglaries have reduced by 50.2 per cent, or 3061 victims. Victim satisfaction is also up at 77%.

This last year alone, home invasion burglaries have fallen by 6.1% and commercial burglaries are down by 5%.

There has been particular success in the north of the county as well where burglaries as a whole have reduced by 12.1% with a massive 21.1% reduction in commercial burglaries.

Reflecting on the reduction, Head of Crime – Detective Superintendent Rich Tompkins, said: “Our burglary teams are passionate about what they do and we have had some fantastic results in the past five years, most notably the significant reduction in incidents.

“Our teams are not just focused on catching the burglars after incidents have occurred, but also working with our crime prevention teams, intelligence colleagues and other departments across the Force, to do as much as we can to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place.

“A 50 per cent overall reduction in just five years is fantastic news but I want to make it clear that we will continue working hard to reduce these figures even further.”

One of the unique things about Operation Crooked is Northamptonshire Police’s focus on ensuring that every burglary victim gets a visit from the police after they have reported an incident.

D/Supt Tompkins added: “Burglary is much more of a violating crime than people think. Victims are left with the knowledge that someone has been inside their home, their safe place, and this leaves them feeling unsafe and anxious.

“That’s why we feel it’s important to make sure every victim gets a police visit so we can provide them with some reassurance.

“Our burglary teams are here to stay and will continue working hard to reduce incidents, prevent crimes and put offender behind bars.”