IF YOU have a house or business in Torrevieja it is more likely to suffer a robbery than in any other municipality in the province.
According to a report published by the Ministry of the Interior there were 404 reported robberies with violence during the first quarter of 2017, which equates to an average of 4.4 assaults to the day.
The figure has increased by 28% over the same period of the previous year and places the city as the place where there are more incidents of this type, above even Alicante, which has four times the population according to the figures of the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Alicante had 269 similar incidents.
Of the total number of robberies registered, 327 occurred in homes, which is 32.9% more than in 2016. This is the highest figure compared to other municipalities with a population above 30,000 inhabitants in the Alicante province.
The Guardia Civil union point to the lack of personnel to work on citizen security as one of the causes, added to the number of different sized urbanisations that make up much of Torrevieja with many these houses only inhabited at certain times of the year.
During the period covered by the report, the increase in the number of vehicle thefts increased from 22 to 27.
The total number of criminal offenses that occurred in Torrevieja in the first three months of the year was 1,776, compared to 1,678 the previous year.
There has been some good news with thefts dropping 13% between January and March – from 542 to 471 – and thefts with violence or intimidation slowing the smallest of falls, alongside drug trafficking. There were no murders within Torrevieja compared to three during the same period 12 months ago.
As for Orihuela, the second most populated municipality in the Vega Baja – officially 75,000 compared to the 83,000 in Torrevieja – overall crime figures dropped 22%.
