Spike in crime in Beechworth and Rutherglen as police weigh up changes

Beechworth residents have raised concerns about late-night offending in the town, with the area reliant on police from Wodonga and other areas to attend.

The issue has been raised with police, councillors and on social media, especially over the past six to 12 months.

Crime statistics released this week show criminal incidents in the Indigo Council area increased by 18.9 per cent in the year to March.

Beechworth recorded the highest number of offences with 192 incidents, followed by Rutherglen and Chiltern.

The most prevalent offence involves breaches of family violence orders, followed by thefts and non-residential break-ins.

Non-residential break-ins more than doubled from 23 to 50, while family violence breaches increased about threefold.

Inspector Paul Henry said policing models were being looked at to address the issue.

"It relates to different models for providing an after hours service that doesn't involve (police) being deployed to those areas directly," he said.

"We are looking towards other ways of providing an after-hours services to, particularly, Rutherglen, Corryong and Beechworth.

"All of those areas are safe places to live.

"The significant increases in crime relate to breaches of intervention orders, which is positive enforcement by police of intervention orders to protect family violence complainants.

"While commercial burglaries do exist, there's very little violent crime in Beechworth and Rutherglen that causes concern in the community."

Mayor Sophie Price said the council regular met police.

"We've received a lot of feedback from the Beechworth community in recent times about what they see as an increase in crime," she said.

"That's something that's been raised consistently over the past six to 12 months.

"In Beechworth it's to do with some break-ins and some vandalism.

"Certainly anecdotally we're hearing from the community that they feel there are more incidents, which is why we're so grateful to have that police safety committee to be able to feed in information and improve communication channels between the community and police.

"We're really grateful for the open channels we have with police and their response."

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