A crime-hit estate has seen burglaries slashed by a third after two bobbies were appointed to pound the beat.

PCs Simon Binks and Bob Hoyle were assigned to Little Horton's Canterbury Estate last August.

And their first ten months have brought results with a 33 per cent drop in burglaries and similar reductions in other offences including thefts from cars.

PC Hoyle said: "We feel we're making headway with it, and it's definitely going in the right direction."

Statistics have been compiled to compare crime rates on the Canterbury Estate in January to June 1997 with the same period in 1998.

There were 204 burglaries on the estate in the first six months of 1997 - more than one every day.

However in the first half of this year, there were only 138, a substantial drop of 33 per cent.

"That is a good decrease," PC Hoyle said. "It is partly due to the high profile policing on the estate which has been going on since last August. Myself and PC Binks try to be there most days.

"We try to walk the streets as much as we can although we have other responsibilities.

"The division has adopted a policy of proactive policing, we act on information received and target known offenders."

The figures reveal that there were 43 car break-ins in Jan-June 1997 which dropped to 35 in the same period this year.

PC Hoyle said the officers had encountered reservations from people who did not want to be labelled a 'grass' for passing on information.

"We want people to come and talk to us and they can do this confidentially or otherwise," he said.

"If everybody stood up to these individuals who are a minority, there wouldn't be this stigma attached.

"A minority of people from the estate are responsible for the crime rate."

Crimes on Canterbury were in the main carried out by residents living on the estate, he said.

He added that cannabis, heroin and amphetamines were peddled from "two or three addresses".

But he warned that if the offenders were caught out they could find themselves thrown out of their homes.

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