Bristol Road is the most dangerous place in Selly

Oh, Bristol Road how we trusted you.

Is it surprising that Bristol Road, bustling focal point to our humble Selly Oak, beloved home of Aldi, The Soak, The Goose, and obviously the Selly Sausage, is the most crime-ridden of all?

If you know Selly you’ve seen a sign or two of these in your time. @sellyoakpolice

Overall crime is high in good ol’ Selly Oak – notorious for a densely packed student population and it’s a well known target for misconduct and wrongdoing in the UK’s second city.

Freshers season last September and October saw 176 crimes committed, this rose to 386 incidents by the end of the year, and amounted to a whopping 1004 counts over the academic period.

Crime counts in different areas of Selly Oak during Sept ’14.

Obviously this all sounds rather horrific, but put into comparison with other student areas it’s not unusual or even bad. Shockingly, it is quite good compared to other student areas of a similar radius.  

Manchester University’s Oxford Road and Victoria Park region saw over double Brum’s figure’s with an overall count of 2355 crimes in the last academic year. Leeds saw 1417 crimes in Hyde Park alone.

Selly Oak Station is the source for many a crime on Heeley Rd.

Now let’s talk burglaries, a notorious issue for Selly Oak, and any of the student area’s mentioned – but are midnight robberies really the most likely crime in our student town?

Many robberies went down in your area last year?

Clearly, the likelihood of getting burgled varies on your area of the town. Poor old Tiverton residents should be most worried, with eight property burglaries and numerous other thefts contributing to twenty-percent of all robberies during term-time last year.

A Tiverton full of sun before the winter sets in (July, Google Maps).

Emily, second year, says that now she has moved out of halls she is worrying about black winter evenings and the walk through Tiverton to get home:

“If I can I’m probably going to walk home with my house-mates, just to be safe. I mean, I was kind of worried about getting attacked, or worse having my law books stolen, but as black belt in Karate I will protect my textbooks if I have to.”

Selly Oak Police warn new students moving in over the next few weeks to: “Lock your doors when leaving, especially on Dawlish Road” – as some of us clearly have enough intelligence to get into uni but not enough common sense to lock our front doors and windows.

Selly Oak Police posted this example of students making robbery easy on twitter.

The Police also give advice such as to: “consider using timer switches with your lights”. Also warning: “don’t give thieves an easy time”. Make sure to lock the house when going to bed, and even when your housemate has gone out without a key to get back in.

Two burglaries took place in the Bournbrook area of Selly Oak in the second week of September and another happened on Heeley Road only a few days ago, preying on houses with open windows and easy access.  So use your heads and shut your windows.

Burglar’s recently active in the Heeley Rd vicinity.

Harry, third year, was surprised to hear that Dawlish Road wasn’t as dangerous as the reputation that precedes it:

“I genuinely thought Dawlish would be up there with Tiverton. Think I thought that Hubert was scarier then the facts claim it is too. I mean I moved to Selly Park to be ‘safer’ but it seems Pershore Road is no better than Bristol for burglaries, or any of the ones right across the road from campus for all the other crimes.”

Luckily for you we’ve compiled a list so you can see just how your area ranks on our table of most dangerous Brum student areas:

Remember apart from burglaries, other common crimes include offences such as theft, sexual assault and violent attacks.

Make sure to stay safe out there in Selly.