Police have urged Subaru owners across the wider Dunedin area to take extra precautions following a spike in vehicle thefts in recent months. <\/p>\n
Almost 30 incidents involving stolen Subaru vehicles had been recorded across the Otago Coastal area, with a significant increase during October. <\/p>\n
Otago Coastal Police Inspector Sam Ramsay said the vehicle thefts were “frustrating” and “disruptive” for victims. <\/p>\n
“Having your vehicle stolen can have a significant impact on people’s daily lives, and we know these incidents cause considerable inconvenience and stress,” he said. <\/p>\n
“Offenders are targeting Subaru vehicles, and we want to remind people to take steps to help protect their vehicles wherever possible.”<\/p>\n
Ramsay said offenders were commonly targeting vehicles parked on public streets, particularly in residential areas. <\/p>\n
“In many cases there is little or no sign of forced entry, with offenders exploiting known vulnerabilities in some vehicle models,” he added.<\/p>\n
While many of the stolen vehicles had since been recovered, police remained concerned about the risks posed by stolen vehicles being driven on roads.<\/p>\n
“It’s unacceptable, and while we’re actively following a number of leads, we also rely on information from the public to help identify those responsible.”<\/p>\n
Police were encouraging Subaru owners to park their vehicles off-street or in a locked garage, and consider using steering wheel locks, immobilisers or alarms.<\/p>\n
Motorists were also encouraged to ensure their vehicles were locked, even when parked at home.<\/p>\n
“Simple security measures can make a vehicle less attractive to offenders and may prevent a theft from occurring,” Ramsay said.<\/p>\n
Anyone who witnessed suspicious behaviour around parked vehicles was urged to contact police on 111 if it is happening at the time, or 105 after the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have urged Subaru owners across the wider Dunedin area to take extra precautions following a spike in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-648801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}