Features
Taskforce to focus on stopping crisis
5th January 2009
A less-than-impressed Denise Statham, new owner of Brumby's Bakery at Wyalla Plaza, in Taylor Street, is not happy that her business was targeted by thieves yesterday morning.
THE ATTENTION of an entire police district is now locked on to solving Toowoomba’s current break-in crisis.
A week-long siege of sophisticated business breaks with a specific signature are now the focus of Operation Senator, a combined taskforce across all police departments aimed at catching the culprits.
The operation will also target three months of opportunistic car thefts at Highfields where thieves have been given easy access to vehicle keys and unlocked cars.
Mysteriously the majority of cars have all been found, back in Toowoomba, with barely a scratch.
Wyalla Plaza NewsXpress and Brumby’s Bakery in the same plaza complex are the latest to have fallen prey to the city’s new influx of business breaks.
The crude means of entry on the surface may indicate a different set of suspects to those responsible for last week’s elaborate hits on Fernwood Women’s Health Club and Day Spa, Baskin and Robbins, Furniture Patch, Subway/Highfields, Big Dad’s Pies and the Baby Superstore.
In these breaks, phone lines running into the businesses were cut.
The Chronicle readers first read about the latest spate across the city in December after thieves broke into the Stock Exchange Hotel.
"While the breaks have always had our attention, the operation involves a more co-ordinated response ... it’s 100 per cent of our focus," Toowoomba CIB officer in charge Detective Sergeant Mark Andrews said.


















