Police watched as thieves cut truck
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by Miles Brignall • An Essex owner-driver whose truck was stolen and then filmed by the police being cut up by a gang of thieves has had two claims for compensation thrown out of court.
Chingford-based Wayne Evans says the Metropolitan Police should have recovered his Leyland Roadtrain tractor rather than leave it to be cut up after it surfaced in a north London yard that was under surveillance.
Two weeks after reporting its theft from near his home in October last year, Evans received a call to say his truck had been found but was in pieces. The police had filmed while it was parked in the yard for a day, and then cut into pieces.
Evans applied for compensation, claiming the police should have recovered the vehicle, but two attempts to get a court to hear his compensation claim have failed because they decid ed there was no case to answer.
Evans, who lost his business as a result of the theft, only received .C1,300 from his insurance company after the premium was paid.
"I'd done a lot of work on the truck and it was worth £11,000 to me," he says.
Evans has since spent more than £2,000 in legal fees and now even faces the Metropolitan Police's costs. "It's ridiculous," he says. "The police watched my vehicle for a whole day and had plenty of opportunities to recover it, and did nothing."
Evans' solicitor, Trevor Greensmith, warns that this is not an isolated incident and something needs to be done about such cases: "The courts are increasingly unlikely to allow cases where the-police are accused of negligence," he says. "One solution would be a nofault compensation fund to help people caught in such circumstances."