Bad year for burglars targeting County Limerick as detections rise by 44% in Bruff district

BRUFF and Roxboro superintendents brought largely good cheer to councillors at the last Cappamore-Kilmallock Municipal District meeting of 2020.

In a first, superintendents John Ryan and Dermot O’Connor gave their presentations remotely on a big screen in the function room of Deebert House Hotel.

Bruff Superintendent John Ryan said the Bruff district saw similar number of burglaries up to the date of the meeting – 72 in 2020; 82 in 2019. However, Supt Ryan said burglary detections had increased by 44% in 2020.

Assaults were down from 49 in 2019 to 33 in 2020. However, assaults causing harm remained very similar – 10 in 2019 to 9 in 2020.

Surprisingly, considering the decrease in traffic volumes, Supt Ryan said the number of accidents on the roads were the same year on year.

“There were more serious injuries from accidents this year – six in 2020; four in 2019,” said Supt Ryan. 

Less cars on the road was reflected by the drink driving figures.

“There was 30 drink driving detections in 2019. There was 13 in 2020. Drug driving remained the same – four in 2019 and four this year,” said Supt Ryan. There was a big jump in drugs detections. “It increased from 16 in 2019 to 40 in 2020,” said Supt Ryan.

Another area where there was a big change year on year was anti social behaviour warnings covering both juveniles and adults. Supt Ryan said this has risen from one in 2019 to 10 in 2020.

Roxboro Superintendent Dermot O’Connor also had positive figures for Cllrs Brigid Teefy, PJ Carey, Mike Donegan, John Egan, Ger Mitchell, Eddie Ryan and Martin Ryan. The Roxboro Garda District covers the Caherconlish and Ballyneety areas of the Cappamore-Kilmallock Municipal District.

”Property crime which includes thefts and burglaries was down 56% in Ballyneety – 34 last year; 15 this year. Crimes against the person fell from from 5 in 2019 to 4 in 2020. 

”In Caherconlish, property crime was 40 in 2019; 20 in 2020,” said Supt O’Connor.

Cllr Mike Donegan said there had been some high profile incidents in Kilmallock in November.

”Groups of youths were throwing stones at cars. I got numerous reports of cars being damaged. Windscreens were damaged,” said Cllr Donegan. He asked if the CCTV in Kilmallock was working correctly following issues raised by Cllrs Francis Foley and Liam Galvin about the CCTV in Abbeyfeale.

Supt Ryan said there was no issue with CCTV in Kilmallock. “They don’t cover all the town but CCTV is very useful in retrieving evidence,” said Supt Ryan.

Ger Mitchell asked Supt Ryan for support for his calls for the next phase of the roll-out of CCTV to the towns and villages of the district, that were not included in the first phase. Supt Ryan said he “fully supports extra CCTV”.

Cathaoirleach John Egan asked if there was any pattern to the burglaries.

“No pattern. They can be daytime, weekends, different days of the week. We do all the analysis work. There was three on one Friday – all completely different modus operandi,” said Supt Ryan, who noted a lot more people are working from home now.

Councillors praised Supt O’Connor and his gardai in Roxboro for arresting two men and seizing two vehicles in relation to alleged dangerous driving linked to a sulky race on the N24 in early December. Cllr Egan said he was driving near Boher when he came upon a sulky race. “All the traffic had to stop,” he said.