Heartless thieves took a laptop and attempted to steal a safe from St Martin’s Church, in Caerphilly town, during a Christmas Day break-in.
They forced their way into the church but dumped the safe, containing precious church records, in the car park. A resident spotted it around 1am on Boxing Day and alerted police.
Rev Mark Greenaway-Robbins told BBC Wales that while the damage caused was minimal, the break-in was very upsetting.
He said: “It’s understandably very upsetting. But the police have been superb and parishioners have rallied around so that’s the nice thing about it all.
Congregation member Mike Todd, who runs a property services company, helped make the building secure after the break-in.
Posting on Facebook he said: “Someone knows who did this and if you have any information, please contact Gwent Police or call 101.”
These thieves, if they had managed to remove this safe, would have deprived both us and future generations of parish records which are possibly irreplaceable. As well as it being despicable to steal from a church these morons are also stealing from all of us, whether Christian, other religion or no religion. Church records form part of the historical fabric of our community.
These might be poor local people that have been the subject of Tory cuts – that’s the usual response to anything these days
Larceny Act 1916.
Every person who;
(1) breaks and enters any place of divine worship and commits any felony therein;
or
(2) breaks out of any place of divine worship, having committed any felony therein;
shall be guilty of felony called sacrilege and on conviction thereof liable to penal servitude for life.
Pity this law doesn’t stand today, if by some stroke of the good fortune the lowlife who did this are caught they’ll get the usual slap on the wrist and a few leisurely weeks bed and board at the tax payers expense, only to commit more criminal acts once released back onto the streets, and I dare say useless Gwent police know who they are as they’re most likely persons of special interest who are responsible for 90% of break ins around the Caerphilly area.
It used to, in mediaeval times, be even worse for anybody caught stealing from a church. Flaying alive was common and King Henry V is recorded as hanging one of his own men when he was caught with silver from an enemy church.
This is symptomatic of a general breakdown of society. Our ability to keep calm and carry on never ceases to amaze me. If you doubled the police force and their presence on our streets specifically, the opportunity to commit crime of many types would be significantly lowered. Of course the criminals would always find a way to be one step ahead, necessity being the mother of invention and all that. But opportunistic crimes would be largely reduced if there is a greater threat of being caught. There is never an excuse to just “allow” low level crime, which is essentially the situation we have across the country. Many people bemoan the levels of crime we are currently at and rightly so, but we are not at epidemic rates yet. However with an impending economic fiscal cliff to fall off those times could well be in our future so it would be better to have a law enforcement structure, able to cope and in place beforehand.
Unfortunately, this requires forethought and investment which is not in the skill set of our current political cartel so we’ll just have to get used to it and what ever follows.
This `event` is simply an extention to the lawlessness that is prevalent throughout Caerphilly Town every night of the week. Sheds, Garages, Cars and vans, being broken into every night. Why such indignity and surprise is generated because it is a `Church` is not proportionate to the event. Whilst the `church` building is a place of worship it is also a quasi business premise, no one was injured, no one suffered financial hardship as a result of this inane behaviour, and nobody will suffer, unlike the resident who wakes to find damage, chaos and property stolen, sometimes irreplaceable items. This is therefore regarded by the Gwent Police and the courts as a `victimless` crime.
Did the culprits have inside information about a safe on the premises? A Church?
now that would be a revelation I had no idea there would be a reason for such security in a place of worship. Who did?. I would have thought the most valuable thing on the premises would have been a half empty bottle of cheap plonk.