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500 burglaries a day in Belgium over the winter holidays
Belgium
13:45 24/09/2015
Christmas- and New Year's Eve are the busiest days for burglars in Belgium. On other days, an average of 200 families are robbed at home, while the number shoots up to 500 per day during the year-end holiday season. That's more than 20 break-ins per hour, reports Het Laatste Nieuws based on figures from the federal police.
Last year there were 75,268 burglaries in Belgium, or at least 200 a day on average. "Our statistics clearly show that the number of burglaries fluctuates according to the season," says Tom Broekaert of the federal police. “Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve stand out, with more than 500 burglaries a day. People should be aware of this," he warns.
Comments
Outrageous. Belgium needs to install thousands of CCTV cameras with the proper manpower to review footage. Relying on police is a waste of time -- there are not sufficient police, they are often doing traffic work for EU meetings, you rarely see a policeman walking around, and police stations are oftentimes closed at night. Policeman standing on a corner, smoking a cigarette, and speaking on his phone is not good policing. Have been burgled many, many times despite keys and alarms -- nothing was ever followed up, fingerprints taken but told the lab work is too expensive so nothing would be done, one time the policeman actually said to me "je joue le secretaire" meaning nothing would happen, and the list goes on. Why do the citizens of a great country constantly fear burglary????????
It's true- it's absolutely rife and the police do sod all about it. When it happened to me there was evidence all over the place. Footprints in the garden and finger prints all over the patio glass, but no evidence at all was taken. The burglars seem to know it as well. In the village where I used to live, there seemed to be more people burgled than not. At least one guy had been done three times!
Mind you, when I first went to Belgium I was advised not to take the company car on offer, a new BMW. Reason? Belgium was the car-jacking centre of Europe. When did that change? When a couple of high ranking politicians got hit on the waterloosetenweg. Unfortunately, the burglars rarely do massive houses with high security.