Big drop in burglary reports

Only 13 home burglaries were reported in Changning District, which has about 700,000 residents, in the first two months of the year, according to police.

The district has the lowest ratio of reported home burglaries to the number of residents of all 16 Shanghai districts.

The number was down 82.2 percent from the same period last year when 73 home burglaries were reported. This drop is also the biggest in the whole city.

Ma Chao, head of the major crime investigation squad of Changning District Public Security Bureau, said police have taken a number of measures to have zero burglary in 90 percent of the district’s residential complexes.

Data from all surveillance cameras in residential complexes now goes to a cloud service. Complexes have door contact censors, window limiters and barbed wire on walls.

Also, officers are targeting places and times when burglaries are committed. Residential committees and community volunteers have stepped up night patrols.

Changning police

Caption: On February 15, Changning District police caught three burglary suspects who were allegedly involved in at least 40 cases in Shanghai in which they stole at least 800,000 yuan (US$120,000) worth of cash and objects. Two of them who allegedly committed a burglary in Jing'an District appear on a surveillance camera.

Changning police

Caption: One of the suspects was caught on a surveillance camera inside a building in a residential complex in Tianshan area of the district where he allegedly committed a burglary on January 31.

“However, we still have residential complexes with insufficient coverage by surveillance cameras and smart security devices as well as inadequate resident vigilance plans,” he said.

The number of reported burglaries in all Shanghai districts in the first two months of this year was down 40.8 percent over the same period last year, police said.

Home burglaries were down 44.6 percent.

Changning District was followed by Hongkou, Qingpu, Jinshan and Songjiang districts, while Hongkou, Jinshan, Yangpu and Qingpu districts had the lowest ratio of reported home burglaries to the number of residents along with Changning, according to police.

Meanwhile, the number of burglary cases solved in the first two months was up 85.4 percent, with the number of home burglary cases solved up 237.8 percent, police said.

About 2,800 of the 8,000 residential complexes around the city have installed smart security systems. There have been few break-ins in these complexes.

Zhu Liang, a Shanghai Public Security Bureau spokesman, said police have embarked on an intensive crackdown on burglars.

“The police will treat burglaries as murder cases and enhance work, including recovering stolen items," he said.

On March 12, police from Xuhui District caught a suspect who was allegedly involved in more than 100 home burglary cases.

The district police started their investigation on March 9 when a third-floor apartment in a residential complex on Pubei Road was broken into from the window and items worth over 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) were stolen.

The suspect, a man surnamed Lei, was caught in Nanning city, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and is now in detention.