Community
27 June, 2025
Crime increase across C’mite
POLICE have expressed disappointment as crime within the Corangamite local government areas (LGA) has gone up 11 per cent on the previous year.
For the year ending March 2025, 655 incidents have been recorded over 12 months – an increase on the 590 recorded for the year ending March 2024.
Corangamite Senior Sergeant Bill Caldow said, while the result was disappointing, some offence types have gone down within the district.
“We’re very low in offences such as house burglary – which I consider to be a very serious offence – and aggravated burglary in houses,” he said.
“The public should take some degree of safety around that.
“Having said that, we’ve had a spate of offending along the Hamilton Highway, particularly in the townships of Lismore, Derrinallum and even through to Mortlake earlier in the year.
“We ran operations to try and counter that, and that has evened out.”
The top five principal offence subgroups within the Corangamite LGA were other theft (75, which is the same as the previous year), criminal damage (up from 58 last year to 64), breach of family violence order (48, which is up from 2024’s total of 35), Non-residential non-aggravated burglary (39, which is an increase from 2024’s 23 offences), and motor vehicle theft (an increase from 22 in 2024 to 32 this year).
“One of our main categories of crime are theft other – which is farm-type theft and petrol drive-offs,” Snr Sgt Caldow said.
“Breaches of family violence orders is a fair bit of our crime category at the moment as well.
“There is a bit of criminal damage, which surprises me a little – the volume of it.
“We are high relative to our area in vehicle theft and a couple of those have finished in arson, which is unacceptable and something we really work to get down.”
Snr Sgt Caldow said the Corangamite LGA remained comparably safer than other LGAs within the Western police district.
“Other local government areas around us are generally higher in their crime number,” he said.
“Colac-Otway Shire was up 17.1 per cent to 1361 offences, and Warrnambool was up 19.9 per cent to 2775 offences.
“Moyne was up 9.7 per cent to 532 offences.
“Generally, when the crime statistical period finished, our figures have evened out a lot and we are tracking quite well since that.
“We are one of the safer areas in the state, but we always strive to be better.”
Within the Corangamite LGA, crime is highest in Camperdown – 194 incidents were reported between March 2024 and March 2025, which is an increase from 150 the previous year.
This was followed by Terang (which saw no change after 92 incidents were reported), Cobden (which saw a decrease from 81 to 75), Lismore (which saw an increase from 42 in 2024 to 51), and Timboon (which saw an increase from 18 to 28 over 12 months).
Lismore is identified as disproportionate due to the spike in incidents along townships along the Hamilton Highway earlier this year.
Snr Sgt Caldow said the Corangamite LGA also compared favourably in terms of the percentage of charges laid, with 46 per cent of incidents resulting in charges.
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