The Chiayi City Police Bureau is integrating manpower from its substations, criminal divisions and forensic teams to make house calls to burglarized homes.
The police bureau revealed that burglaries account for 40 percent of its caseload each year, with household burglaries significantly impacting public security and assets. The focus of their work is therefore to reduce the incidence of burglaries.
Understanding that burglary victims typically want to first determine their losses rather than having to run back and forth between home and the police station, the police bureau thus decided to send officers to burglarized homes to report on the cases.
In this way, the police not only can save the public from making a trip to the police station to file paperwork, they themselves can also dust for fingerprints and take statements at the same time. This one-stop home service also helps reduce stress for burglary victims.
Chiayi Deputy Police Chief Weng Rong-zhi said the new burglary response team consists of officers from three departments. A police substation officer will survey the scene and interview neighbors, while criminal and forensics officers will also search for evidence and write a police report.
Meanwhile, a security consultant will provide the household with a safety analysis, providing the residents with suggestions on how to make the home more secure.
(This article originally appeared in The Liberty Times Jan. 13.)