If you have ever wondered what a week looks like for the people answering the phones and driving the response vehicles at Atlas, this past week is a good example. Between Sunday the 18th and Saturday the 24th May, our teams were called out to 92 incidents across the Bay. Some were frightening, some were heartbreaking, and a few even had a happy ending.

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Here is what we saw.

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More than anything else, this was a week of theft. Almost 40 of those 92 call-outs involved something being stolen or someone trying. And the same items kept coming up again and again: copper pipes, water meters, air conditioner units, and lengths of cable. It is the kind of crime that does not make headlines, but it leaves a family without water in the morning or a business owner staring at a stripped wall where the aircon used to be.

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In Mosel, a homeowner only realised something was wrong when the water stopped running. The tap and pipe at the meter had been quietly cut away and taken. In North End, a business lost a whole aircon unit and the copper that went with it. Out in the industrial areas, our officers kept finding the same thing: people digging into drains and lamp poles for municipal cabling. The encouraging part is that our teams did not just write these up and leave. On several scenes they recovered the stolen material on the spot, and in a handful of cases the suspects were caught and handed straight to the police.

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Then there were the break-ins. Eleven homes and businesses were broken into during the week, with another eight where someone tried and failed. When you read through the reports, one thing comes up so often it is hard to ignore: in a lot of the confirmed break-ins, the alarm was either not armed or had not been working for a while. One family in Summerstrand told our officer the system had been down for two years. We understand completely that fixing an alarm is not always at the top of the list when money is tight, but it is the one thing that keeps coming back to bite. An alarm that is armed and working is the difference between a quick response and coming home to an empty lounge.

Not everything we attended to this week was about crime, though, and that is something people often forget about what we do. Eighteen of our call-outs were medical. Our officers found themselves doing CPR on an 84 year old gentleman who collapsed during a game of bowls, sitting with an elderly resident having a seizure until the ambulance arrived, and more than once simply being the first calm presence on a scene while waiting for paramedics. We also helped at six vehicle accidents around the Bay.

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A few things worth doing this week

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None of this needs to feel overwhelming. If you do just three things, you will be in a far better spot. Arm your alarm every time you leave the house and every night, even when you are home. If it has been playing up, give us a call and let us send a technician out, because a working alarm is worth far more than one that beeps and does nothing. Take a look at your exposed copper, your water meter and your aircon, and think about a cover or a cage and a light over that area. And if you see someone fiddling with cabling or a meter in your street, even if it is not your property, pick up the phone. That one call has helped us catch people red-handed this week.

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