The heat map above (click the map for a bigger image) shows that there were forty-six (46) residential burglaries reported last week to the Vancouver Police Department. Fifteen (15) of those were on the Westside.

One of the trends we’ve seen this summer already is a marked increase of thieves cutting telephone lines before breaking in. Unless wireless communication is being utilized (for example BLINK mesh radio monitoring), cutting the phone lines disables the vast majority of burglar alarms in people’s homes.

In terms of theft from vehicles, there were one-hundred and fifty six (156) reported incidents in the city, approximately forty-six (46) occurred on the Westside.

There were twenty-seven (27) vehicles stolen last week, six (6) of which were taken from the Westside.

All statistics and maps are from the Vancouver Police Department.

Here is the latest heatmap from the Vancouver Police showing reported burglaries between February 9th and 15th in Vancouver.

The first map indicates residential break and enters… (click on the image for a larger view)

Over the seven day period, there were a total of 46 incidents, two locations experienced multiple break ins. That is an average of just over 6.5 residential break and enters a day.

The second map indicates the number of commercial break and enters during the same period.

Total of 27 commercial break and enter incidents were reported for the seven day period for an average of just under 4 per day.

Here are the heat maps for Vancouver for the weeks of August 26th through September 1st, and September 2nd through 9th, 2009 that show where reported residential burglaries occurred.

First off is August 26th to September 1st… which had 59 reported residential burglaries:

Next is September 2nd through 9th… where 61 residential burglaries were reported to the VPD…

These numbers average out to about 8.5 residential burglaries per day in the city. That’s been pretty consistent for all of August… about 60 home broken into each week. When you factor in that most burglaries happen between Monday and Friday, between 11am and 4:00pm (rather than evenly spread over a 24 hour period)… the real “average” gets closer to 12 per day.

These maps help show that residential burglary is not concentrated heavily in any one neighbourhood. Crooks pick on homes in every neighbourhood throughout the city. When a spike is seen in any particular neighbourhood, it is typically the work of a single burglar working one place for a few days before moving to another area in the city.

By the end of the year, if you take all of these heat maps from throughout the year and superimpose them on one another, there are not too many ‘burglar free’ spaces. Here’s what 2007 looked like…

So… the bad news is that burglary is (and will continue to be) a major concern in Vancouver. The good news is that it really isn’t that hard to minimize your risk of becoming a victim. It’s not expensive either. In fact, most of the security tactics that have the most impact are either free or at least very cheap.

One of the best ways to learn about how to maximize your home security is to attend one of our ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminars. Our next one is on Tuesday, September 22nd at 6:45pm. Click here to RSVP.

Would you like to get updates about the crime that is happening in your neighbourhood (if you live in Vancouver)?

We send out a newsletter every couple of months that includes burglary statistics that are broken out by neighbourhood, and customized to where you live. If you’d like to subscribe, please visit our website at www.providentsecurity.ca and add your email address in the ‘Subscribe to our Newsletter’ box on the right hand side. (We promise not to send you anything other than the newsletter.)

It’s Kerrisdale Days again….

The Provident slide will be out between 10:00am and 4:30pm tomorrow (Saturday, April 25th 2009) during Kerrisdale Days.

As always, we’ll be on Yew Street between the Royal Bank and TD Canada Trust. We’ve got about two dozen of our team members who will be volunteering to help give out balloons, temporary tattoos and get people on & off of the slide. Of course, if you have any questions about your home security, we’ll have lots of time to talk about that as well.

The day starts off with the Kerrisdale Parade, promptly at 10:00am. The parade is one of the longest standing community parades in the city… more than 1,000 Little Leaguers, pipe bands, antique cars as well as the VPD Mounted Squad (and a few Provident vehicles) will be participating.

It’s a fantastic community event and we’re proud to have been a Kerrisdale Business Association (KBA) member, sponsor and security provider for 13 years now.

Click here to see the schedule of events from the KBA website.

Our next home security seminar will start at 7:00pm this coming Monday, October 27th in our Kerrisdale Showroom.

Similar to last month’s version, both myself and Cst. Ray Gardner will lead a discussion outlining exactly how burglaries occur on the Westside, and most importantly… what you can do about it.

Our last seminar was a great success… so much so that we ended up having an overflow crowd.

As a result, we now know that the maximum number of people that we can comfortably hold in the showroom is 16… so please let us know by sending us an email at seminar@providentsecurity.bc.ca to confirm that you would like to attend.

We will have wine & cheese starting around 6:30pm… so please feel free to come by early. We will be starting the presentation right at 7:00pm and it will be over by 8:45pm.

After the presentation, we will lead a tour through our central monitoring station for those that are interested to see what happens behind the scenes.

What have others said about the information presented at the seminar?

Here is some of the survey feedback we received after the September seminar…

“I particularly liked reiteration of the information about how to delay a burglar for 5 minutes. The tour of the operations facility was very interesting and confidence building”.

“I felt at ease. Information was useful.”

“I found it interesting and informative and I’m sure others would as well …. whether they have a system or not. It helps to stay current with crime trends and security options.”

“with all the home security advertising, I think it can be somewhat confusing for people and your session helped to clear up some issues”

Here are the VPD crime maps for Vancouver during the week of December 12th through 18th, 2007….

The first maps shows all of the reported residential burglaries last week…. like last week, other than South Granville (or Fairview depending on who you talk to) it was reasonably quiet on the Westside.

Next, is the commercial burglaries… more of the same… other than some extra attention in Marpole.

Theft from auto…

and Stolen Auto…

Here are the VPD crime maps for incidents of residential burglary, commercial burglary, theft from auto and theft from auto respectively.

Overall, it was a relatively quiet week on the Westside… some incidents in South Granville, Kitsilano and Point Grey, but pretty quiet in Dunbar and Kerrisdale.

Commercial burglaries on the Westside were heaviest along Granville Street (although no Provident clients got hit… and we monitor more than 80 businesses between 6th and 16th)…

Theft from auto…

Theft of auto…

It has been a while since I’ve posted any of the neighbourhood burglary statistics…. in keeping with tradition, the first graph compares the total number of burglaries on the Westside (the yellow line) against the percentage of burglaries in the whole city that occurred on the Westside (the blue bars).

Click on the any of the images for a larger version…

As you can see, it has been pretty quiet (by comparison) on the Westside for the last few months… which certainly corresponds with our own experience. While we have been kept relatively busy with commercial burglaries, and attempted burglaries, over the past three months… it has been unusually inactive on the residential front.

In fact, April 2007 had the lowest recorded number of burglaries on the Westside (201) since I have been keeping track… which is since January 2002.

However, burglaries have been a little down across the city… the total number of reported burglaries in the entire city in April 2007 was 611, which was the lowest since February 2006. As a percentage of total burglaries in the city though, the Westside has remained fairly consistent with about a third of all burglaries in the city happening here. (I wonder who was in jail over the past couple months to account for the change).

Below I have attached some neighbourhood specific graphs showing total number of burglaries per month…

Kerrisdale Burglaries November 2004 – April 2007 (Click the image for a bigger version)

Shaughnessy Burglaries November 2004 – April 2007 (Click the image for a bigger version)

Dunbar/Southlands Burglaries November 2004 – April 2007 (Click the image for a bigger version)

West Point Grey Burglaries November 2004 – April 2007 (Click the image for a bigger version)

As always, these statistics are all courtesy of the Vancouver Police Department. The map below shows how the city divides each neighbourhood… anytime that I have referenced neighbourhood specific burglary stats on this blog, it corresponds to the following….