An ongoing Hamilton Police operation targeting career criminals is having a desired effect with 40 offenders arrested and several others giving themselves up.
Sergeant Aaron Alderton of the City's Tactical Response Unit said the objective of Operation Persil is to keep pressure applied to the activity of recidivist dishonesty and violent offenders.
"On Monday we went public via the media for the need of those subject to court imposed sanctions to adhere to them or run the risk of having officers on their door step any where- any time.
"And that message seems to have sunken in. At that time we'd seen four people turn themselves in however by the close of play yesterday that figure had risen to 16 and already this morning there's been another two."
This follows on from the activities of the operational team in October that saw 15 people surrender themselves.
"The public is pretty clear they are fed up with burglars using stolen property to fund their drug habits and this operation is about getting under the skin of those people who, despite having gone before the courts, continue to offend while on bail or on detention."
Into its second year Operation Persil has so far accounted for over 300 arrests and has highlighted issues surrounding the correlation between dishonesty offending such as burglary and receiving and the illicit drugs trade and the proliferation of illegal firearms.
And while Police are assessing the success of this latest round of search warrants they have a warning to Hamilton residents about getting too complacent.
"Over recent days we've had reports of several burglaries in the north of the City where offenders are taking advantage of home owners trying to cool down their houses by leaving doors and windows open while they are home.
"Quite a few houses have been subjected to thieves darting through doors and windows, stealing handbags, wallets, laptops and jewellery and taking off, even when the owners are home."
Mr Alderton said often the offender would take a bag, empty its contents in the drive and then run off.
"We're not saying live in a furnace but what we are saying is that if you need to leave windows open, secure them and don't leave your doors open or unlocked when you're sleeping."
Results
40 arrests
18 voluntary surrenders
1010 vehicle stops
IONs 60
TONs 9
Breath Tests 24
Vehicle Seizures 1
In addition cannabis plants with an estimates street value of over $126,000 were recovered at a Claudelands address while an offender found at another was identified as a person of interest in relation to an aggravated robbery in the City only minutes earlier, he has since been charged for robbery and for a number of residential burglaries.
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