IT'S been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently, but Jerrabomberra residents and Queanbeyan police say Jerra remains a safe community for families.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The suburb has been victim to a violent home invasion that occurred last Saturday night (see separate story), as well as a series of car break-ins the week prior, and a knife-point robbery at the local shopping centre early one morning in September.
However Queanbeyan Police acting inspector Scott Tozer said it wasn't a sign that the suburb was becoming more dangerous. If anything, he said, it was one of the quieter Queanbeyan suburbs for crime.
"It sort of ebbs and flows, the crime there," he said. "Typically it is [quieter], but incidents like these probably show that even though it is a quieter area residents still need to be fairly vigilant, and if they do see anything strange, or anyone hanging around, they really do need to contact us."
Crime statistics sourced by The Queanbeyan Age from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) show break and enters and motor vehicle theft dropping dramatically in Jerrabomberra over recent years.
Almost 100 Jerra houses were broken into over the course of 2009 and 2010, but only eight residential break-ins were recorded for the first six months of 2014.
Similarly, there were 82 recorded thefts from motor vehicles in 2010 and 72 in 2012, but only eight from January to June this year.
No other major Queanbeyan suburb experienced such dramatic drops across these two crime categories.
Local mum and Jerrabomberra Resident's Association vice president, Margot Sachse, said that the suburb was still a safe place to raise a young family.
She moved with her husband to Jerrabomberra in 2000, and the couple now have two young sons. Ms Sachse said she had no concerns for her own safety in the suburb, and said she had no qualms about letting her kids play with neighbours in the street on weekends.
"If you have a look at the statistics for our community and compare them to other communities in NSW, or even across the border in Red Hill, we're still a very safe community with a very low crime rate," she said.
"But from time to time, the undesirables come in, and you have to be vigilant- you can't leave your front door open with your handbag on it, because sadly these people are opportunists."
Ms Sachse said she felt for the Jerrabomberra couple who returned to their home on Saturday evening to find an intruder inside, and encouraged neighbours to look out for each other.
"It's one of the most horrible things you could imagine walking into, and you have to feel for what they went through. The message the community should take is that you have to lock your place up and be vigilant.
"We need to look out for each other. That's a really critical part of living in a healthy community. You look out for your neighbours, and if something doesn't look right, you ring up the police and report it. It's about caring for each other," she said.