VICTORIANS are terrified and rightfully so.

Every morning they wake to news of another violent home invasion overnight. A knife held to a pensioner’s throat. Children screaming as masked men hover over their beds. Intruders using crowbars and baseball bats to terrorise homeowners.

In January and February this year, homes were broken into by armed men in Cranbourne, St Albans, Albion, Brighton, Bayswater, Skye, Mentone, Taylor’s Hill, Hillside, Ascot Vale and Geelong.

As the following graphic shows, the incidents are spread across large parts of the state.

Each dot on the map is a terrifying encounter. Four of the attacks happened in just one night.

The first incident took place on January 4, when a woman in her late 50s was set upon in the city’s west. She was hit across the face and forced to sit and watch as men ransacked her home.

Victoria Police commander Russell Barrett said the crimes were “abhorrent” and “horrendous”.

On January 30, a terminally ill woman was robbed in Ascot Vale. Mother-of-three Kellie McElligott, said thieves broke into her home through a back door around 4.30am. They took with them phones, purses and the occupant’s car.

Two teens, 17 and 15, were arrested and charged after the victim’s son used the Find My iPhone app to locate his stolen phone.

In February, thieves stole phones and a car but didn’t get far. Prabhath Ponnamaneni was asleep on the couch inside a home at Albion, west of Melbourne, around 11.30pm when three men broke in and went straight for the kitchen.

Once there, they grabbed the occupant’s own knives before waking him. Police say the door was unlocked and the knives were held to the victim’s throat.

The men demanded electronic equipment and car keys. Mr Ponnamaneni handed over a mobile phone and was told to unlock it and reset it. The burglars stole wallets, car keys belonging to five other occupants and the victim’s car, a Honda CRV.

They crashed it a short distance away.

Days later a similar attack was unfolding in Taylor’s Hill. It would be the start of a week of violent raids that put the issue squarely back at the feet of police and politicians.

During the first aggravated burglary, four teens broke into a home with baseball bats and crowbars.

The Age reported the men were of African appearance and entered through a window before 1am.

The next night, again in Albion, masked intruders armed with a hammer broke into a room where a mum and her young son were sleeping.

One of the three men held a knife to the woman’s throat while another two carried out the robbery.

Victoria’s Chrief Commissioner Graham Ashton addressed the spike in related offending. He said there had been a “gap” in offending between January and February but “repeat offenders” known to police were “out of custody” and “back into offending”.

That very same night, five separate home invasions were reported to police in areas as far apart as St Albans, Brighton, Bayswater, Skye and Mentone. In one of the attacks, a 96-year-old woman was terrorised by an intruder demanding cash and valuables.

3AW Drive host Tom Elliot, fed up with the lack of action, told listeners the gang problem will continue “until we try the obvious”.

“It worries me that we never seem to try the obvious,” he said on Tuesday.

“Lock up these young thugs and lock them up for a long time.”

He said the idea that crime stats are made up by the media is “amazing”. It’s a sentiment thousands of Victorians agree with.

Hayden Bradford started Protect Victoria last year to advocate for changes to sentencing laws and to “highlight judicial system failings”. His group now has more than 34,000 members and will host a “peaceful” anti-crime rally at the office of Premier Daniel Andrews on Saturday.

“I for one am sick of so much violent crime occurring in Victoria because of the government’s ‘soft on crime’ policies and a judicial who loved to grant violent offenders and repeat offenders bail, community service orders (and) probation,” he wrote.

Changes are slowly being made, but so are promises. This year’s Victorian election will be fought and won on the promise of a safer Victoria.

New legislation was introduced on Monday that will require the youth parole board to notify police when serious offenders are released or about to be released.

Police Minister Lisa Neville said ending violent youth offending was the “number one priority of Victoria Police and the government”.

The Premier said his government “will turn this around”.

“We’re seeing early signs of that in terms of the last lot of crime statistics (and) we’ll get another lot of statistics soon.”

Those stats though are anything but flattering. There were 49,042 burglaries and break-ins in Victoria in 2017, according to the government’s own crime statistics agency.

That’s down on 2016 numbers but it’s the second highest it’s been since 2008.

Email: rohan.smith1@news.com.au | Twitter: @ro_smith