From the police perspective - how do they know it is his front gate if he refuses to give his name & address for them to check.
Within Australia roughly 1 house in 8 now has someone living in it that has served a custodial sentence > 12 months. Disturbingly large figure!
No, if someone has served 7 jail terms they only get counted once.
A typical Break & Enter merchant commits 18-20 jobs a month.
So, in this case, the police come across someone dressed in warm outdoor gear who says he'd just taken out a bin (unusual to rug up that much to take the bin 12m to the street), on his phone & refusing to provide details.
Suspicious to say the least.
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In our area in Sydney (last of original Neighbourhood Watch zones still going between Sydney Harbour & Woollongong) we've led to 28 people being arrested for B&E and drug dealing since 2000 by reporting people acting in a similar manner to this story. 3 types of crime do not exist in our area as we encourage locals (cover around 2,600 dwellings) to look out their street facing windows every time they go by them. Especially at night/early morning.
Fun fact: most active criminals don't like long commutes - they live & work locally, often within 150m of where they live = less chance of police catching them in transit after B&E, car theft, drug dealing etc etc. So we continue to deliver a newsletter encouraging people to look out their windows & details of latest arrests/convictions etc.
Local crims read the newsletter and mostly decide to work outside our zone. One who had just got out from jail for 220+ (I think it was) B&E in the Inner West, moved into our area a week or so after the regular newsletter. He served 10 months on an eighteen month sentence btw.
Decided he did not want to walk far at all. Tried breaking into house with active (78yr old couple) NW supporters since the 1980s. Wife wakes up, hears sound of door being forced, wakes husband up, he calls police who WARN do not make a noise, turn on lights etc as that shows where you are & if drug affected they'll come to deal with you...
As we're known as NW area, police detour to transit through our area on purpose to fly the flag.
This time, in under two minutes 4 cars/wagons arrived without sirens and locked down the block & the street behind. One was dog squad Senior Sergeant with dog, who'd previously been in our area, travelling on the Eastern Distributor & detoured to help.
Police told couple that he was walking down their driveway & now turn on lights, make a noise (as still not through the door). The B&E guy, ran off up the driveway looking over his shoulder at the house & bounced off the rather large Senior Sergeant, fell down to find a friendly german shepherd smiling at him (how the local area commander described it).
LAC commander went on to explain that as he was on parole, they gave him a chaffeur driven ride back to jail & did not have to lose 4 hours processing him for the magistrates court that night. In NSW, typically it takes longer for police to enter all the permutations of data/information required than for a magistrate to release the suspect.
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So, can totally understand why the Victorian Police wanted to know his name & address.
. 
Hence the focus on "who made the decision" (to engage private security). They need a villain! And a scalp or three. They've extracted their first scalp, no doubt more to come.
