By Luke Voogt
A woman’s alleged thefts totalling $100,000 from the Royal Geelong Show have driven local deception offences to almost double in a year.
Former show executive Jacqueline Patmore, 46, faces 708 fraud charges at a committal hearing at Geelong Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
Police charged Ms Patmore in December 2017 after she allegedly defrauded the Royal Geelong Agricultural and Pastoral Society of about $100,000 from 2012 to 2015.
Reported deception offences in Geelong rose 72 per cent from April 2017 to March 2018 up 935 from 1291 to 2226, according to Crime Statistics Agency Victoria.
But Geelong Superintendent Craig Gillard confirmed most of the increase resulted from one case involving “false accounting offences within a business environment.”
Without this case deception rose by 17 per cent, with most other reported offences resulting from stolen cards, Supt Gillard said.
“A card will be stolen from a car, purse or home and be used as tap-and-go offending.”
But overall crime decreased by one per cent per 100,000 people in Geelong, with the total number of offences increasing by about one percent.
“We’re pretty happy with that,” Supt Gillard said.
“But when we reflect on it we can still clearly see there is some room for improvement.”
Theft and burglary dropped by 12 per cent, “a fantastic result” that Supt Gillard credited to Geelong police’s targeting of recidivist offenders.
“We know who our key offenders are because their names and faces keep popping up all the time,” he said.
Geelong police and support agencies had also done “great work” in youth offending, Supt Gillard said.
“It’s about asking how do we intervene with this young person and keep them from committing high-level offending and ending up in jail.”
But assault, robbery, stalking and sexual offences all increased in Geelong.
“It’s an issue Victoria-wide. We need to be more respectful of people’s opinions, views and the way they live,” Supt Gillard said.
Assaults were up by 2 per cent but Supt Gillard said increasing prison populations nearby contributed to this.
Dangerous and negligent behaviour increased by 31 per cent, with several incidents of “people using their vehicle as a weapon”, Supt Gillard said.
Supt Gillard urged locals to lock their cars and not leave anything valuable in them, after 51 per cent of car thefts resulted from unlocked doors.
“Think of all that time we could have saved and committed to physical police presence,” he said.
Sexual offences rose by 45 per cent, the Indy reported last Friday, following the release of the latest crime statistics.
Barwon Centre Against Sexual Assault chief Helen Bolton attributed the rise to increased reporting, with violent porn, dating apps and historic offences also contributing.
