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Truck crime soars
Page 6
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by 79% in a year
Is truck crime out of control, or are we simply hearing more about it?
Jennifer Ball talks to victims who say the police don't seem to care.
TRUCKPOL has hit back at claims that it is failing operators after latest figures revealed a 79% increase in truck crime in the past year, The Metropolitan Police Road Freight Crime Unit's latest figures include 782 reported incidents of truck crime during the past three months, compared with 437 in the same period last year. Between July and September eight truck drivers a week were the victim of crime; two a week were hijacked.
DS Mark Hooper insists that the increase in crime is largely due to police forces being more active in reporting incidents to the unit. He explains:"For the first six months of TruckPol we did have a problem with people not knowing who we were.
-The different police forces all knew about the National Stolen Lorry Load Desk but initially they wouldn't talk to us. We put a lot of hard work into telling police forces across the country about us and now more are reporting truck crime."
However, he admits that truck crime in his own Metropolitan region has gone up: "Truck crime in London has risen 70%. We're doing our job but it's the same old story: truck crime is a low priority for those out on the road trying to catch criminals, All we can do is try and raise the profile of truck crime on the policing agenda."
But Dave Deadman who runs Surrey firm Dave Deadman Trucking says that the police are doing nothing to help operators. He even resorted to hiring a helicopter to scour London for his stolen trucks: "I reported them stolen at 4.30am but the police didn't arrive until Ilarn the next day.
"If they had started looking immediately they would have been able to see them on the motorway cameras," he says. "I eventually found them through a tipoff following a CM appeal.
"We are still paying for one of the cranes that we lost and our insurance costs have soared £30,000 this year as a result of crime," Deadman concludes.