With temperatures starting to rise and summer fast approaching, Papamoa Police Station Sergeant Jason Perry predicts there will be a rise in crime to match in his area.

'There's just generally more activity in Papamoa leading up to summertime so I would expect to see an increase in people trying to commit crime because they're out and about more,” says Jason.

When The Sun spoke to Sergeant Perry, he and his team had just returned from a search warrant at a Papamoa address. 'One house that we did the search warrant on – there was property from probably five separate burglaries,” says Jason.

'We have members in our community who unfortunately, they're like magpies – they'll just steal anything that's not tied down and it shouldn't be like that.”

Papamoa of old

Typically, when daylight saving flicks over – people get outdoors much more, undertake summer activities and also leave their homes open to fresh air and sunshine, and property outside.

Jason says the Papamoa of old, you could leave your surfboards out on the lawn 'and they'd be there in the morning – unfortunately it's not like that anymore”.

He adds: 'The Papamoa of old we had paddocks around us and isolated beach houses and beach baches – now we have high-density housing and shopping centres.”

Asked if the growth of Papamoa's community is contributing to greater crime, Jason says: 'Any community that grows will bring its own crime problems with it, so the numbers will probably increase in burglaries as the population grows – but the number of the burglaries to population probably won't”.

He gives an example. 'If, at the moment, we're getting 10 burglaries per 10,000 people and we have 20,000 people in the area – we're going to get 20 burglaries …but we're still going to have the same percentage of burglaries.”

On the rise

Although Jason currently sees a flattening off in burglaries and vehicle crime due to execution of search warrants and offenders being charged, he does think these crimes will rise again leading up to summer.

As a result he urges Papamoa residents to secure their belongings and their homes from now on.

'Unfortunately, they're going to have to lock stuff away.”

Jason also warns that break-ins to cars and tradie vehicles is ongoing. 'Tradies really just have to secure their vehicles and they should be naming stuff.

'We're going and doing search warrants on addresses all the time and we can see the tools there and we know that they've been stolen in burglaries; but unless they're identified, we can't take them.”

Looking ahead, Jason says: 'One thing that we will see increasing over summer is disorder in the public and you can't hide that fact”.

He says Papamoa has liquor ban areas and the public should be mindful of this. 'They have to be aware that there are liquor ban areas around and that's a contributor to public disorder.”

With an influx of holidaymakers to Papamoa in warmer months, Jason says: 'What we do know is that that brings more call for service around public disorder – that's the increase we'll see over the next few months”.