THE second ram-raid burglary in the Farnham area this month has sparked an angry backlash at the perceived lack of police presence in the town.

Rowledge Village Shop became the latest to suffer a break-in the early hours of Monday, as thieves tried and failed to smash a vehicle through the front door of the Co-op supermarket in Recreation Road.

It comes after the Co-op in Wrecclesham was targeted in a near identical ram-raid on January 6. In both cases thieves fled empty handed having failed to steal the shops’ cash machines.

Lisa Dyer, deputy manager of the Rowledge store, was woken by a call from the Co-op’s security company at 3am on Monday after an alarm was triggered.

She told The Herald: “It was a bit of a nasty shock when I got my phone call. I came down straight away and it was obvious that they had tried to ram a car through the front door.

“They nicked a wheelie bin from somewhere, which they’ve driven into the door - exactly as they did at Wrecclesham - but they didn’t get very far and failed to break into the store.

“Because they couldn’t get a proper run-up I don’t think they could create enough force to take the door out. They didn’t get through the security shutter either.”

Lisa added the Rowledge store has never been targeted by burglars before and any CCTV footage would be handed over to the police. The shop reopened on Monday afternoon.

In the wake of the ram-raid, Rowledge residents expressed shock that criminals would target their village shop and accused Surrey Police of not doing enough to prevent crime.

Pat Flanagan, 77, said: “Our rates keep going up, and they’re going up again this year, yet they’ve just sold Farnham Police Station for I don’t know how much money and we don’t have any policemen on the streets. It’s a bit stupid isn’t it.

“Do you ever see a policeman at all - even in Farnham? I’ve been living in Farnham for the past 60 years and I can’t remember the village shop ever being broken into before. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

Graham Smithers, 72, added: “Rowledge is a very quiet place and, in the main, we’re all retired people here. We’ve got a little coffee shop, a butchers, a couple of pubs, a garage and the village shop is especially important to me because I can’t walk far. We all go about our lives in a peaceful manner and we don’t want things like this.”

It was revealed only last week that reported crime in Waverley has increased by nine per cent this financial year up to December, with the number of crimes solved falling four per cent to just 17 per cent.

And many people took to the Herald’s Facebook page this week to vent their anger at the recent spate of crime in Farnham, paying particular reference to:

• The Upper Hale family assaulted in their own home by crowbar-wielding burglars on January 18.

• The young man found lying in the middle of Upper Hale Road with serious injuries after a suspected hit and run on Boxing Day.

• A spate of ‘lock-snapping’ burglaries in the Folly Hill area last October.

• Another spate of burglaries in the Moor Park area last summer and autumn where thieves smashed through security gates, ignoring alarms and ransacking homes.

• The murder of Glenn Hack in a town centre homeless shelter last July.

• And the conviction of a gang of criminals last November for offences including the burglaries of John Goodridge Menswear in Downing Street and the Spar supermarket in Elstead.

“What is going on lately,” wrote Amy Wood on Facebook. “So many burglaries, criminal damage, hit and runs, murders - I could go on! This used to be a nice place to live!”

“Cut backs in police, up goes the crime rate,” added Steve Hopper, while Tracey Butcher contributed: “Maybe if we still had a police station in Farnham that might help. When they know the police will be coming from far away places that take 45 minutes to get here, they think they can do as they please. Country is falling apart!”

Speaking prior to the Rowledge ram raid at the Waverley Crime Summit earlier this month, Superintendent Duncan Greenhalgh from Surrey Police blamed organised gangs from London for committing up to half of all burglaries in the borough.

He said: “One of the things we suffer from in Surrey is being half-an-hour down the road from London. Unfortunately we live in a very attractive place for burglars and a number of times a year we will get professional gangs that will come down to Surrey, do 15 serious crimes in a day and then be off again.”

Supt Greenhalgh added Surrey Police’s new Policing in Your Neighbourhood model, to be launched this April, will help crack down on rural crime by doubling the number of officers dedicated to Waverley.

“We have to be pro-active and front-footed, and having more local officers under the new model should allow us to be more alert and alive to the threats coming to us,” he continued.

“The response times should improve and officers’ local knowledge will increase, so you will get the same cops turning up to the same jobs over and over again instead of working across the whole of the county.

“Policing is about two things - recognising the presence of the abnormal and the absence of the normal. The new local policing teams can achieve that.”