Wiltshire Police says ‘only eight dogs have been stolen in the past year’.
The force says it dealt with just 26 dog-related crime reports between December 2019 and December 2020, despite widespread conversation on social media about a large number of incidents in Wiltshire area over the past months.
Seeking to set the record straight, a police spokesperson said: “Please be reassured there has not been a spate of dog thefts here.
“To give you some context, in the past year between December 2019 and December 2020 we have received 26 reports which relate to thefts, attempted thefts, and/or suspicious activity that could be perceived as a pre-cursor to an attempted theft of dogs by unknown suspects.
“Of those 26, eight involved a dog physically being taken. And although for those eight owners this crime is very distressing, these figures show that fortunately this type of crime is not a major one in our county.
“However, we are never complacent; members of our Intelligence Department, Community Policing Teams and Rural Crime Team liaise regularly with our neighbouring forces to share information to help us to proactively manage different crime types, and this is one of them.”
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