A BIRMINGHAM suburb has gone from having virtually no crime to one burglary every day as police cutbacks start to bite.

Up to the start of this week, 18 houses had been broken into in Quinton, and over the last nine months the number of burglaries has shot up by 29 per cent.

For the past nine years Quinton has enjoyed the lowest crime rate in the West Midlands, averaging just one or two burglaries a month.

Sgt Jeff Doak, who is in charge of policing locally, told residents at a neighbourhood forum he had lost five officers in the last month because they had been re-deployed to other areas.

“I’m not going to stand here and lie to you and say we’ve got good stuff coming out of our ears because we have not – it’s a very thin blue line,” he said.

“I’m really struggling to fight crime at the moment and we have started the New Year quite badly.”

He said recruitment had been frozen and in the coming months he was likely to lose more officers to other areas. Sgt Doak told the meeting a burglar recently released from prison had told him Quinton was now regarded as being “hot”.

But he admitted crime levels would now worsen because he was down to just 15 officers covering the whole of Quinton. He was speaking at a meeting of Quinton Police Consultative Committee.