Fighting Crime With Coffee

Preventing crime, reporting crime and raising crime awareness were front and centre of Armstrong Mount Duneed’s first Coffee with a Cop workshop last week.

More than 20 residents met up with police officers Joe Anderson and Tammy Geeves at Armstrong’s 9 Grams café to talk graffiti, theft from cars, burglaries, traffic, police resources and more.

The first of a planned series of meetings, police highlighted the importance of security cameras, watching out your neighbours, removing valuables from cars and keeping car keys secure in the home.

With summer holidays looming, they stressed the need to arrange for vacant homes to be checked by friends, family or police.

“People can become too complacent about crime,” Leading Senior Constable Anderson said.

“They’ll leave valuable like laptops and backpacks sitting on their car seats. It’s just an invitation. Car keys shouldn’t be left on kitchen benches or in bowls where they can easily found.

“The important thing is to report crime to police.

“Cameras, deadlocks, security doors are good but so is stepping up and keeping an eye on neighbour’s houses, making arrangements for papers and mail if you’re away and maybe getting as dog, provided it doesn’t bark all day.”

Sen Const Anderson said police were working with Geelong council on a graffiti tag database and calculating the cost of criminal damage by individual graffiti vandals.

He stressed the importance of reporting any and all criminal activity to police on 000 or 131444.