Burglaries In Thurles Continue Undetected

An ongoing spate of burglaries here in Thurles over the past few months and highlighted by Thurles.Info, continues with no sign to date of the criminals responsible being detected.

Recently two houses in Thurles; one in the Borroway area and another in the Kennedy park area have been broken into twice, within a short space of time. In the Collins Park area, within the past few days, we have received news that one house; vacated for less than half an hour; the occupants returned to discover serious damage caused to the exterior of their property, in an attempted break-in.

The situation has now become even more serious with the manifestation of a new Face Book Page being opened, entitled ‘Thurles Equalizer,‘ which threatens to assert the need for a type of vigilante justice; threatening to punish Thurles lawbreakers personally rather than relying on our legal authorities.  Many people locally will indeed sympathise with their promised convictions;  “Any information about these scumbags breaking into elderly people’s houses and terrorising them, will be never be shared with anyone not even the Gardaí. We are not interested in a court date or slaps on wrists. PM us pls.”

While many locals are calling for a public meeting on the lines of action recently taken by Roscrea residents; local active Fianna Fáil Councillor Seamus Hanafin has been speaking to some of our other councillors in town and they have now agreed to come together in a cross party alliance on this issue. We understand that contact with the Gardaí has been arranged and a meeting between the local Councillors, Senior Garda, Crime Prevention Officers and Community Gardaí is now imminent.

Increases in rural crime, especially by out of town criminals, plus the reduction in our rural Garda force, has severely hampered investigations into local crime detection countrywide despite the best efforts of Gardaí particularly in rural areas.

The reluctance recently by many of our residents to attend local ‘Neighbourhood Watch,’ meetings, despite the strong invitation by Thurles Gardaí to do so, has given further encouragement to these criminals now operating within our midst.