Australian Farmers are being urged to collaborate with law enforcement to curb rural crimes. New South Wales Police and Crime Stoppers rolled out a state-wide campaign to help give farmers the tools to prevent these crimes from happening in their communities.
Farmer Bert Harris lives at Melrose, a property 30 kilometres north of Mudgee in central New South wales.
Mr. Harris has been in this line of work for fifty years.
"Since we've been up here I've always had cattle, I had sheep and that's all, just cattle and sheep but we've done away with the sheep we have cattle now but they're on another property and they're at the moment we're doing it very hard as they call it because there's a big drought." he said.
Two years ago his cattle was stolen from the local saleyard.
The theft was recorded in a CCTV footage, which was then uploaded to the local police station's Facebook page. The authorities managed to arrest and prosecute the people responsible.
Mr Harris says without the help of social media he would have had a huge financial blow, pointing out that’s besides theft, he also often faces trespassing in his property.
"When I did have these cattle taken that was for the rates and I just lost my grandson and I was rather upset and they rang up and I thought fancy that people do that luckily they were on the ball and they got onto them straight away. We've had fences cut where they were coming through with a vehicle now I got in touch with the police and we managed to solve that problem."
New South Wales Police and Crime Stoppers are joining forces in order to tackle crimes such as stock theft, trespassing, illegal hunting and firearm theft.
According to the authorities, isolated properties tend to be attractive targets.
"We regularly talk to farmers day in day out when we go out and visit them,'' says detective Inspector Cameron Whiteside of the Rural Crime Prevention Team. Inspector Whiteside says the police is offering the farmers advice on how to stop that from happening:
'We give them information about target hardening, and in essence what that is about is making your property a little bit harder to break into or the opportunities to be a victim of a crime, so the offenders push elsewhere. It's not just about talking to people, it's also about deterring people from committing crimes and working together."
New laws are being rolled out across Australia to protect farmers like Mr Harris and their families.
In New South Wales, a proposed legislation being put through parliament in the coming weeks could see farm trespassers fined up to $22,000 or given a three year jail sentence.
The laws come after a spate of activity on farms and abattoirs in the past 19 months.
For some farmers, these crimes are an extra financial burden as they force them to take measures to protect their land.
However, Daniel McCulloch, a stock agent in Tamworth, says protecting your property doesn't have to break the bank.
"It's while you're in that remote type area where people aren't living on the properties and there's not many neighbours about but my thoughts would be, cameras are very cheap, the hunting cameras and that sort of thing, put signs up there that you've got cameras about and catch the people while if they're doing it. The bush telegraph follows so quick so if somebody sees something that's suspicious call the neighbourhood there's so many social media channels that are about to be in connection with everybody these days so there's a lot of ways they can keep in touch - tell the police if you see anything suspicious at all and the people that are doing it will soon stop."
A federal bill to further protect farms is currently before the parliament.
