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Don't make it easy to steal
Page 14
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Operators are still
ignoring TruckPol advice. Jennifer Ball reports.
AS TRUCK CRIME uses du us the UK operators are being warned to step up security and ensure that keys are never left in unattended cabs.
Truck Pol , the Metropolitan Police road freight crime unit, is responding to a spate of opportunist truck crimes, It says that there were 819 reported truck crimes in the last quarter of 2003, compared with 709 for the same period of 2002.
And despite warnings that drivers should always remove keys. even if only leaving their cabs briefly in a number of cases vehicles were stolen after keys were left in the ignition.A number of drivers also had personal possessions such as bags, tachographs and mobile phones stolen from their unlocked cabs.
TruckPol boss Detective Sergeant Mark Hooper (above) says: "We cannot stress enough the importance of locking cabs, even if the driver just goes to the back of his truck to check his tailgate. If all drivers did this we could halve truck crime in the UK.
He also warns about the growing number of 'jump-up' crimes, where ether-based incapacitants have been used to disable sleeping drivers: "If drivers oversleep, wake-up with a headache and believe that they could have been a victim of such a crime they should report it to the police and their employer so we can assess how extensive these attacks are.