Outisde my house is a courtesy Disabled Parking Bay. I had to collect my partner from Heathrow on Friday night. When I returned there was a car parked in the bay. It did display a Blue Badge. I have no way of knowing whether that Badge was genuine and given the vehicle was a high end Mercedes (not available under the Motability Scheme) I suspect the badge and car belonged to different people.
Where I normally park my car, I would hear if it were tampered with. Because of the presence of the Mercedes I could not. Parking in KPR, since the various overcrowded new developments, is at a premium. The nearest and only space I could find was in Hillmore Grove. This was 11 pm.
In the morning, at 9:30 I went to retrieve my car. I had a hospital appointment. NO CAR. No sign of broken glass or anything else indicating a break in.
The car's "keyless" system is disabled to prevent intruder access. Both keys to the car were in my house.
999 call to Police, expecting that a rapid report would mean they could trace the vehicle using their nuisance cameras. Fat chance. Instead a laborious process where a robotic voiced individual went through a form filling process... and nothing. I sent them further detail, that bit can be updated online... They acknowledged.... Nothing
Then I had a phone call... from someone who clearly had not bothered to read the report and wanted to go through the whole process again. I mentioned the cameras. "They are not ours. They belong to the Borough". It turned out that they meant the cameras belonged the the local Police (I thought the Metropolitan Police was a single entity with various divisions). No attempt had been made to track the vehicle. It could not escape the area without passing a significant number of these cameras. Those cameras, as this individual admitted, have number recognition on them and that means the route my car took would be traceable. Nothing... but this less than intelligent person with what sounded like a Spanish or Portugese accent said they would pass it back to "borough".
I feel unsafe living in an area which clearly has no effective Police service. The lack of any investigative ability or will is clearly a product of Khant's "leadership" of London.
Car Stolen
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JGD
- Posts: 1235
- Joined: 5 Feb 2018 11:39
- Location: Perry Hill, SE6 (free-transferred to Perry Vale Ward, next to Bell Green; distinct from Sydenham).
- Contact:
Re: Car Stolen
Horrible story - and I am sorry this has happened to you.
The measure of just how ineffective our policing is just as you report it here - another contact made with you, with the intent of going through a process you have already completed. The degree of duplication and the resources applied to repeat something you have already done is hardly credible.
Have we not seen a commitment in recent months that police services will follow through on EVERY report of a crime and not just conduct a process of logging the crime and then telling the victim of crime that the case is closed?
The fact that a bog-standard script was read to you - "They are not ours. They belong to the Borough" - was on the scale of brush-off that typifies the unacceptable and structured approach to dismissing cases and closing them down.
Just how much more appropriate would it have been to use the resource to conduct a rapid scan of recorded images, getting an identification of perpetrators, intervening and making arrests and thereby preventing the victim after you suffering the same loss. Is recovery of your stolen property too much of an aspiration? How many more vehicles will be spirited away if our police services elect to do nothing?
CCTV monitoring is not a panacea - but it is an effective tool when it is present.
The measure of just how ineffective our policing is just as you report it here - another contact made with you, with the intent of going through a process you have already completed. The degree of duplication and the resources applied to repeat something you have already done is hardly credible.
Have we not seen a commitment in recent months that police services will follow through on EVERY report of a crime and not just conduct a process of logging the crime and then telling the victim of crime that the case is closed?
The fact that a bog-standard script was read to you - "They are not ours. They belong to the Borough" - was on the scale of brush-off that typifies the unacceptable and structured approach to dismissing cases and closing them down.
Just how much more appropriate would it have been to use the resource to conduct a rapid scan of recorded images, getting an identification of perpetrators, intervening and making arrests and thereby preventing the victim after you suffering the same loss. Is recovery of your stolen property too much of an aspiration? How many more vehicles will be spirited away if our police services elect to do nothing?
CCTV monitoring is not a panacea - but it is an effective tool when it is present.
Re: Car Stolen
It gets worse. The man who delivered my temporary hired car told me this was the fifth he had delivered that day FOR THE SAME REASON!
From what I can gather, the thieves are targeting the cars of people with disabilities (making this a hate crime) and in particular Toyotas.
According to the rules the Police sent me, in their auto-generated response, the fact that it is one of a series of such crimes makes it top of their priority list. Sadly no human, probably, has ever looked at my crime report.
From what I can gather, the thieves are targeting the cars of people with disabilities (making this a hate crime) and in particular Toyotas.
According to the rules the Police sent me, in their auto-generated response, the fact that it is one of a series of such crimes makes it top of their priority list. Sadly no human, probably, has ever looked at my crime report.
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JGD
- Posts: 1235
- Joined: 5 Feb 2018 11:39
- Location: Perry Hill, SE6 (free-transferred to Perry Vale Ward, next to Bell Green; distinct from Sydenham).
- Contact:
Re: Car Stolen
This "top prioritisation" adds weight to the argument to see more efficient deployment of resources as being critical in preventing repetition of this form of crime.
Five or six incidents means five or six more opportunities in which CCTV images could be secured and then using rapid scanning techniques to determine whether images are present that will help identify perpetrators.
If the images are "prosecutable quality" - that would be a superb outcome but even if they are not - it may assist detectives in the identification and detection and arresting of the perpetrators.
Otherwise, resource has been wasted on clerical duties recording detail that no one will refer to or use ever again - a double waste with no return of stolen property.
Do our localised MPS teams read these forums anymore?
Five or six incidents means five or six more opportunities in which CCTV images could be secured and then using rapid scanning techniques to determine whether images are present that will help identify perpetrators.
If the images are "prosecutable quality" - that would be a superb outcome but even if they are not - it may assist detectives in the identification and detection and arresting of the perpetrators.
Otherwise, resource has been wasted on clerical duties recording detail that no one will refer to or use ever again - a double waste with no return of stolen property.
Do our localised MPS teams read these forums anymore?
Re: Car Stolen
Yesterday I hear a neighbour had his car stolen around the same time.