Tarneit car thefts up 61 per cent in the crime tables Victoria refreshes on 24 September

On Thursday 24 September 2026 the Crime Statistics Agency publishes recorded crime for the year to 30 June 2026, the last full-year figures before the 28 November state election. The tables it will replace, for the year to 31 March 2026 and released on 18 June 2026, already show a pattern that most coverage stops short of. Victoria recorded 468,711 criminal incidents, down 1.0 per cent. The City of Casey recorded 23,284, up 9.1 per cent. Tarneit recorded 3,661, up 14.2 per cent, and its count of B41 Motor vehicle theft rose from 190 to 306, a rise of 61 per cent. Point Cook, in the same council, fell 16.6 per cent.

Every figure below comes from the CSA’s LGA criminal incidents file for the year ending March 2026 (Tables 01, 02 and 03), downloaded and recalculated by this magazine on 17 September 2026. Unless stated otherwise, each comparison is the year to 31 March 2026 against the year to 31 March 2025, and each offence category is given in the CSA’s own wording. The point of setting the baseline out now is that on 24 September the same tables can be re-run and read against it.

What the statewide release says

The CSA’s release of 18 June 2026 put criminal incidents at 468,711, down 1.0 per cent from 473,518, and the incident rate at 6,513.1 per 100,000 people, down 2.7 per cent. Recorded offences were 625,426, down 0.2 per cent. Alleged offender incidents moved in opposite directions by age: 22,654 youth alleged offender incidents, down 6.0 per cent, against 171,812 adult alleged offender incidents, up 10.8 per cent.

Fiona Dowsley, the CSA’s Chief Statistician, said in that release: “For the first time since 2022, incidents alleged to be linked to youth offenders have decreased, with adults now responsible for 88.0% of offender incidents.” She added: “There has been a 10.8% increase in adult offender incidents recorded over the last 12 months, driven by increases in breaches of bail conditions, stealing from retail stores and breaches of family violence orders.”

Two CSA cautions apply to everything that follows. Its explanatory notes state: “In order for a record to be made in LEAP, a person needs to make a victim report or Victoria Police need to detect that a crime has occurred. As a result, statistics released by the CSA do not represent all crime experienced within the community, but represent those that are reported to, or recorded, by Victoria Police.” A recorded criminal incident is “a criminal event that may include multiple offences, alleged offenders and/or victims”, so it is neither a conviction nor a count of offenders. The agency also advises that “previously published data should be considered superseded by subsequent releases of statistics”, which is why the 24 September file must be compared within itself and not against the numbers printed here.

Ten councils, and the one moving the other way

Ten councils cover the suburbs this readership lives in, from Wyndham and Melton in the west to Hume, Whittlesea and Mitchell in the north and Casey, Greater Dandenong, Cardinia and Monash in the south-east, with Brimbank in between. Together they recorded 139,444 criminal incidents in the year to 31 March 2026, 29.8 per cent of the state total.

Casey is the outlier. Its 23,284 incidents were the second-highest count of Victoria’s 79 local government areas, behind only the City of Melbourne, and the rise from 21,336 was 9.1 per cent in a year in which the state fell. Two years earlier the count was 17,489, so the two-year rise is 33.1 per cent. Casey’s rate also rose, from 5,142.1 to 5,401.8 per 100,000, up 5.1 per cent. The subdivision B40 Theft accounts for most of the movement: 8,842 to 9,928, up 12.3 per cent. Within it, B42 Steal from a motor vehicle went from 3,586 to 4,475 (up 24.8 per cent) and B41 Motor vehicle theft from 1,272 to 1,545 (up 21.5 per cent). Those two subgroups alone added 1,162 incidents, well over half of Casey’s net rise of 1,948. E20 Breaches of orders rose from 1,741 to 2,213 (up 27.1 per cent), including E23 Breach bail conditions from 24 to 330, and A211 FV Serious assault from 624 to 763. B321 Residential non-aggravated burglary fell from 825 to 732, down 11.3 per cent.

Wyndham recorded 18,922, up 2.0 per cent from 18,555 and the third-highest count in the state, while its rate fell 2.8 per cent to 5,183.8. One subgroup explains almost the whole net rise of 367: B43 Steal from a retail store went from 1,129 to 1,493, up 364 or 32.2 per cent. B41 Motor vehicle theft rose from 1,144 to 1,277 (up 11.6 per cent), but B42 Steal from a motor vehicle fell from 3,518 to 3,139 (down 10.8 per cent), B321 Residential non-aggravated burglary fell from 891 to 794 and B311 Residential aggravated burglary from 377 to 363. E20 Breaches of orders rose from 1,216 to 1,565, up 28.7 per cent.

Melton recorded 12,726, up 7.3 per cent from 11,856, with B41 Motor vehicle theft up from 593 to 733 (23.6 per cent) and B42 unchanged at 1,689; its rate nonetheless fell 5.3 per cent to 4,848.3. Brimbank recorded 14,753, up 2.9 per cent, and was the only council of the ten besides Casey whose rate rose (up 2.5 per cent to 7,416.5); B41 went from 849 to 1,055 and B42 from 2,556 to 3,184, both up about 24 per cent. Hume recorded 17,449, up 1.1 per cent, with B41 up from 1,282 to 1,368 but B42 down from 3,205 to 2,917 and B43 down from 840 to 623.

The rest fell. Whittlesea recorded 13,440, down 1.4 per cent, Mitchell 3,721, down 1.3 per cent, Cardinia 6,510, down 4.2 per cent (with B311 Residential aggravated burglary down from 134 to 83), and Monash 11,714, down 3.2 per cent. Greater Dandenong recorded 16,925, down 0.2 per cent, but its rate of 10,051.0 per 100,000 is the highest of the ten and ninth of the 79 councils; its B43 Steal from a retail store fell from 1,465 to 1,009, down 31.1 per cent.

One technical point matters in growth councils. The CSA calculates LGA rates from ABS estimated resident population for earlier years and, for the current year, from the Department of Transport and Planning’s Victoria in Future projections. That is why Wyndham, Melton and Hume can each show a rising count and a falling rate in the same table.

Suburb by suburb, from Tarneit to Glen Waverley

Table 03 gives counts by suburb, with no population attached. Where a suburb straddles two councils (Truganina in Wyndham and Melton, Doreen in Whittlesea and Nillumbik, Beveridge in Mitchell and Whittlesea), both parts are added together here.

In the west, Tarneit went from 3,207 to 3,661 (up 14.2 per cent, and up 54.1 per cent on the 2,375 recorded two years earlier). B41 Motor vehicle theft went from 190 to 306, B42 Steal from a motor vehicle from 628 to 660, B311 Residential aggravated burglary from 62 to 70 and B321 Residential non-aggravated burglary from 157 to 168. Truganina went from 2,241 to 2,493 (up 11.2 per cent), with B41 up from 219 to 274 (25.1 per cent) and B311 from 46 to 62 (34.8 per cent). Hoppers Crossing went from 2,877 to 3,169 (up 10.1 per cent), with B41 up from 150 to 162 and B321 down from 122 to 91.

Point Cook went the other way, from 2,743 to 2,288 (down 16.6 per cent). B42 Steal from a motor vehicle halved, from 672 to 347, and B41 fell from 188 to 113, yet B311 Residential aggravated burglary rose from 108 to 122, the highest count of that offence among the five western suburbs listed here. Werribee fell from 4,452 to 4,121 (down 7.4 per cent), with B42 down from 699 to 566 and B311 from 57 to 41. Tarneit rising while Point Cook falls is what the table records; the table does not say why.

In the north, the established suburbs were flat. Craigieburn went from 3,215 to 3,203 (down 0.4 per cent), with B42 down from 689 to 610 and B41 from 235 to 227. Epping went from 3,252 to 3,226, although B41 rose from 194 to 217 and B311 from 10 to 19. Mickleham went from 1,019 to 999, with B42 down from 171 to 131. Roxburgh Park rose from 895 to 950. The rises are in the newer estates. Donnybrook went from 379 to 477 (up 25.9 per cent), with B41 from 14 to 29. Doreen went from 613 to 737 (up 20.2 per cent), with B42 from 101 to 122, while its B311 fell from 14 to 3. Kalkallo went from 412 to 480 (up 16.5 per cent), with B321 Residential non-aggravated burglary from 16 to 38 and B41 from 29 to 40. Beveridge went from 462 to 530 (up 14.7 per cent) even as B42 fell from 73 to 51. Mernda went from 1,045 to 1,115 and Wollert from 994 to 1,052, with Wollert’s B42 up from 152 to 183 (20.4 per cent).

In the south-east, Berwick went from 2,280 to 2,612 (up 14.6 per cent): B42 rose from 431 to 590, B41 from 159 to 227 and B311 Residential aggravated burglary from 59 to 126, more than doubling. Cranbourne went from 2,831 to 3,240 (up 14.4 per cent), with B42 up from 431 to 539 and B41 from 145 to 170. Clyde North rose only 3.4 per cent, from 1,835 to 1,898, and its burglary counts fell sharply: B311 from 113 to 67 and B321 from 126 to 79. Dandenong, the largest suburb count in this set, went from 7,275 to 7,163 (down 1.5 per cent) while B41 rose from 338 to 407 (20.4 per cent). Clayton went from 1,928 to 1,960, with B41 up from 141 to 183 (29.8 per cent). Glen Waverley fell from 2,319 to 2,100 (down 9.4 per cent), with B321 down from 197 to 165.

Counts are not rates, and the growth suburbs grew

The CSA publishes no population for suburbs, so no suburb rate is calculated here and none should be. The suburbs with the largest percentage rises are also the suburbs adding the most households. The ABS Regional population release of 31 March 2026 records that Greater Melbourne grew by 105,000 people (2.0 per cent) in 2024-25, with net overseas migration of 81,200, and that the Tarneit North statistical area grew 18.5 per cent to 15,880 people, the third-fastest growth rate in the country. Mickleham-Yuroke added 4,100 people, Rockbank-Mount Cottrell 4,600 and Fraser Rise-Plumpton 4,100 (19.7 per cent). The City of Whittlesea’s draft Economic Growth Strategy 2026-2036, on its 15 September 2026 agenda, gives Donnybrook a population of 5,596 with projected growth of 715.73 per cent from 2024 to 2036, and Wollert 33,578 with 107.2 per cent.

The two-year counts show the same thing. Donnybrook recorded 220 incidents in the year to March 2024 and 477 two years later; Beveridge went from 265 to 530, Kalkallo from 291 to 480 and Tarneit from 2,375 to 3,661. A count can rise because more people live on the same streets, because more people report, or because more offences occur, and Table 03 does not separate the three. For a household in Kalkallo or Donnybrook, the honest reading is that the raw count in its suburb rose by between a sixth and a quarter in a year, and that nobody has published the denominator that would turn that into a risk.

What Wyndham’s patrol trial did and did not show

Wyndham City Council ran nightly security patrols in Truganina from November 2025 until 26 April 2026, funded from a $372,000 allocation in its 2025-26 budget for a community safety program that also covered public lighting. The officers’ report to the 28 July 2026 Council Meeting, by Liana Thompson, Director City Operations, says the allocation “has been fully expended through delivery of the trial and its evaluation”.

Patrols logged 973 incident reports. Metropolis Research, engaged by council, sorted them into 372 “potentially safety or crime-related incidents” (38 per cent, mostly suspicious vehicles or people), 373 “neighbourhood alerts and reassurance activity” (38 per cent, such as open garage doors) and 228 amenity matters, including 128 parking incidents. Of the 973, “33 reports, or 3%, were considered potentially serious safety or crime-related incidents”, and in 10 the patrol was the first responder. The post-trial survey of 204 door-to-door interviews, 104 in Truganina and 100 elsewhere in Wyndham, with a margin of error of plus or minus 10 per cent, found that Truganina respondents’ worry about crime in their local neighbourhood fell by 11 points, or 37 per cent, while worry rose among respondents elsewhere in Wyndham.

On the question that matters for this article, the report is explicit: “A direct correlation between year-to-date crime data and the Truganina Security Patrol Trial cannot be reliably drawn, as the available crime reporting period does not align directly with the trial’s operational period from November 2025 to April 2026.” Council received and noted the report on a motion by Cr Preet Singh, seconded by Cr Josh Gilligan. In the council’s release of 29 July 2026, Cr Singh, Bemin Ward councillor, said: “While Council has a role to play in supporting community safety, responsibility for policing and public safety ultimately rests with the State Government.”

What the parties and councils are promising

Labor’s announcements since Ben Carroll became Premier on 28 July 2026 are, in order, a set of funded measures and one election pledge. On 13 August 2026 the government announced 150 additional Protective Services Officers, taking new PSOs funded in a year to 200, regulation changes so PSOs can patrol shopping strips, and Operation Pulse extended to the end of 2027; the Premier’s line was “More police and PSOs in more places, more often”. On 14 August 2026 it announced a $10 million Local Community Safety Infrastructure Fund for council CCTV and lighting, Community Connectors at Sunshine, St Albans and Broadmeadows stations and $7 million for drug-harm outreach in Maribyrnong, Brimbank and Greater Dandenong. On 14 September 2026 the $10 million Creating Safer Places grants program opened, with councils able to apply for up to $250,000 and applications closing on 26 October 2026; Paul Edbrooke, Minister for Police, said: “Councils have been asking for more support to make their communities safer, and Labor is listening.” On 15 September 2026 the government added $10 million for 17 violence prevention programs, $13 million in Ground Up grants and $9.5 million for Blue Light Victoria mentoring.

The police academy is a promise, not a program. Star Weekly reported on 14 September 2026 that Premier Carroll and Mr Edbrooke announced on Sunday 13 September that “a new police training academy will be opened in Wyndham if Labor wins this year’s state election”, with 1,500 extra police. The Premier’s release of 14 September 2026 puts it the same way: “a re-elected Carroll Labor Government will deliver” 1,500 more police and “a second metro police academy” in Wyndham. No stand-alone Premier’s release for the pledge appears on the government’s site.

The Coalition’s position is on the Liberal Party’s own site. On 11 April 2026 Jess Wilson, Leader of the Opposition, and Brad Battin, Shadow Minister for Police and Corrections, committed a Liberal and Nationals government to “recruit 3,000 additional Victoria Police officers”, half of them experienced officers from the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand, and to “reopen the more than 40 police stations closed or operating on reduced hours”. Ms Wilson said: “Our plan will get more cops on the beat, reopen closed police stations and restore community safety across Victoria.” Mr Battin said: “Under Labor, our population is growing but our police force is shrinking, resulting in record high crime levels.” An 8 April 2026 release pledged 200 additional PSOs at every metropolitan train station, and on 30 July 2026 James Newbury, Shadow Attorney-General, announced that “a further five offences”, including motor vehicle theft, “will be included under Adult Crime, Adult Time”, so that youth offenders charged with those offences would face an adult court. Both parties also have bail positions; those were set out in this magazine’s election guide of 30 August 2026 and are not repeated here.

Councils are asking for something more specific. Brimbank City Council’s release of 14 September 2026 welcomed the academy pledge, said the west has “a long-term police vacancy rate of 20 per cent”, and claimed “a combined 12.7 per cent increase in recorded crimes across the region so far in 2026”. The release gives no source for that figure, and it does not appear in the CSA tables, where the six western councils’ combined incidents rose 2.7 per cent year on year. Cr Virginia Tachos, Mayor of Brimbank, said: “Promises to increase police numbers alone are not enough.” Five western mayors, including Cr Mia Shaw of Wyndham, had put the same case on 5 August 2026; Cr Shaw said “Wyndham is one of the fastest-growing communities in Australia, but essential services have not kept pace.” In the north, Hume City Council resolved on 14 September 2026, on a motion by Cr Naim Kurt seconded by Cr Sam Misho, to note that a Community Safety Plan is an action in its 2026-27 annual action plan and that a CCTV policy review “will be completed and presented to Council by 22 February 2027”.

What to look for on 24 September

The file to download is the LGA criminal incidents workbook for the year ending June 2026, which the CSA will list on its download data page; the March 2026 edition was named Data_Tables_LGA_Criminal_Incidents_Year_Ending_March_2026. Three tables carry this story. Table 01 gives incidents and the rate per 100,000 for each council: re-run Casey, Wyndham, Melton, Brimbank, Hume, Whittlesea, Mitchell, Greater Dandenong, Cardinia and Monash, and check first whether Casey is still rising against the state. Table 02 gives offence subgroups by council: re-run B41 Motor vehicle theft, B42 Steal from a motor vehicle, B43 Steal from a retail store, B311 Residential aggravated burglary, B321 Residential non-aggravated burglary and E20 Breaches of orders for the same ten, and watch whether Wyndham’s retail theft rise and Casey’s vehicle offences persist. Table 03 gives suburb counts: re-run Tarneit, Truganina, Point Cook, Werribee and Hoppers Crossing in the west; Craigieburn, Mickleham, Kalkallo, Roxburgh Park, Wollert, Epping, Mernda, Doreen, Donnybrook and Beveridge in the north; and Clyde North, Cranbourne, Berwick, Dandenong, Clayton and Glen Waverley in the south-east, summing both council parts for Truganina, Doreen and Beveridge.

Three checks apply to the re-run. Use the prior-year column inside the new file, because the CSA revises earlier periods and the March file’s figures will be superseded. Report the subgroup that moved, in the CSA’s wording, rather than the total alone. And do not divide a suburb count by anything, because the agency publishes nothing to divide it by.

For a reader in Tarneit, Clyde North, Craigieburn or Dandenong, the practical reading of these tables is narrower than the campaign around them. The recorded count in your suburb is public, it is updated four times a year, and the next update is a week away. What it shows for the year to March 2026 is that vehicle offences, not burglary, drove the rises in the outer west and outer south-east, that the biggest percentage rises were in the newest estates, and that neither major party’s police pledge, 1,500 or 3,000, is money in a budget before 28 November. When the June figures arrive, the first question to ask of any claim made about them is which table, which suburb and which year it was compared with.

Sources

• Crime Statistics Agency, “Data_Tables_LGA_Criminal_Incidents_Year_Ending_March_2026” (listed at https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/crime-statistics/latest-victorian-crime-data/download-data). https://files.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/2026-06/Data_Tables_LGA_Criminal_Incidents_Year_Ending_March_2026_0.xlsx
• Crime Statistics Agency, “Release calendar”. https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/crime-statistics/release-calendar
• Crime Statistics Agency, homepage. https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/
• Crime Statistics Agency, “Media release: Adult offending increases as youth offending decreases” (18 June 2026). https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/media-centre/news/media-release-adult-offending-increases-as-youth-offending-decreases
• Crime Statistics Agency, “Explanatory notes”. https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/about-the-data/explanatory-notes
• Wyndham City Council, Officers’ Report “Truganina Security Patrols Report”, Council Meeting 28 July 2026, Item 7.4 (Liana Thompson, Director City Operations), via the Resolve portal (API item https://api.resolve.red/public/Items/16292, report PDF retrieved through the portal’s ItemFiles endpoint). https://wyndham.resolve.red/portal/
• Wyndham City Council, “Security patrol trial wraps up in Truganina” (29 July 2026). https://www.wyndham.vic.gov.au/news/security-patrol-trial-wraps-truganina
• Premier of Victoria, “More PSOs, More Places, More Often” (13 August 2026). https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/more-psos-more-place-more-often
• Premier of Victoria, “More Frontline Support To Make Melbourne’s West Safer” (14 August 2026). https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/more-frontline-support-make-melbournes-west-safer
• Premier of Victoria, “Labor Acts To Make Local Spaces Safer” (14 September 2026). https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/labor-acts-make-local-spaces-safer
• Premier of Victoria, “More Early Intervention To Stop Crime Before It Starts” (15 September 2026). https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/more-early-intervention-stop-crime-it-starts
• Premier of Victoria, media release index (Drupal JSON API, checked 17 September 2026). https://content.premier.vic.gov.au/api/v1/node/news?site=4&sort=-created
• Star Weekly (Wyndham), Glenn Fisher, “Police academy promise” (14 September 2026). https://wyndham.starweekly.com.au/news/police-academy-promise/
• Liberal Victoria, “Keeping Victorians safe with 3,000 new police officers” (11 April 2026). https://vicliberal.org.au/news/article/keeping-victorians-safe-with-3000-new-police-officers
• Liberal Victoria, “Expanded Adult Crime, Adult Time to crack down on car thefts and keep Victorians safe” (30 July 2026). https://vicliberal.org.au/news/article/2026-07-30-expanded-adult-crime-adult-time-to-crack-down-on-car-thefts-and-keep-victorians-safe
• Liberal Victoria, “Keeping commuters and train stations safe with 200 new PSOs” (8 April 2026) and “Crime remains at record highs under Labor” (18 June 2026) https://vicliberal.org.au/news/article/2026-06-18-crime-remains-at-record-highs-under-labor. https://vicliberal.org.au/news/article/2026-04-08-keeping-commuters-and-train-stations-safe-with-200-new-psos
• Brimbank City Council, “Police promise welcome, but parties must deliver western training academy” (14 September 2026). https://www.brimbank.vic.gov.au/media-release/police-promise-welcome-parties-must-deliver-western-training-academy
• Wyndham City Council, “Western mayors unite to call for more community policing” (5 August 2026). https://www.wyndham.vic.gov.au/news/western-mayors-unite-call-more-community-policing
• Hume City Council, Minutes, Council Meeting 14 September 2026, item 8.5. https://www.hume.vic.gov.au/files/sharedassets/public/v/2/your-council/council-meetings/minutes/minutes-14-september-2026-open.pdf
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Regional population, 2024-25” (31 March 2026). https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-population/latest-release
• City of Whittlesea, Scheduled Council Meeting agenda 15 September 2026, draft Economic Growth Strategy 2026-2036. https://www.whittlesea.vic.gov.au/files/assets/public/v/1/documents/about-us/council/council-meeting-agendas-and-minutes/2026/15-sep/scheduled-council-meeting-agenda-15-september-2026.pdf
• Premier of Victoria, “Statement From The Premier” (28 July 2026). https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/statement-premier-170

Related reading

• the election guide, which covers the March 2025 bail laws; cross-referenced in the parties section
• Truganina, for the local context of the patrol trial section