Tourist burglars operating in Laois

Laois’s police chief says ‘touristic’ type burglars have been operating in the county. 

Chief Superintendent John Scanlan made the comments at the last Laois Joint Policing Committee meeting in Portlaoise. 

“Overall property crime being up six percent but that’s 252 to 268, so that’s ten crimes in a three month period. It’s fairly static. We expected far more larger increases in crime when people came back out after the lockdown versus 2021, 2022, we didn’t see that,” he told members. 

He was speaking in relation to Laois crime figures from the last quarter of 2021 were compared to those from the same period in 2022 at the meeting. In relation to burglaries of homes and commercial premises, Chief Supt Scanlan outlined the types of criminals involved.

“There is three dynamics to burglaries in this part of the world. One is your local person committing burglaries within the demographic that they live in. We do in every society breed our own people who commit crime,” said Chief Supt Scanlan.  

“Then there is a travelling cohort of criminals coming out of bigger urban centres. They move across a wider geography than just the area they live in,” he said.  

“We also have that dynamic of, I don’t want to feed into any phobias about non nationals, but there is a certain touristic type of burglary now happening where groups fly into Ireland to commit burglaries over a period of a couple of weeks and then leave the country again. We have interdicted some of them recently. I can’t really talk to it directly but people will be familiar with some operations we have run because they have received some media attention. That is the demographic,” said Chief Supt Scanlan.  

He said the crime figures are “exceptionally good” relative to where they were in 2019 before the Covid lockdown. 

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While he was pleased with the decrease in property crime, Chief Supt Scanlan acknowledged the fact that the figures would be of no comfort to victims of crimes. 

“One is one too many, but the trends are positive,” he said. 

The Joint Policing Committee meeting was Chief Supt Scanlan’s last before his retirement.