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The numbers game
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Page 31
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The West Midlands is pretty close to topping the league for truck crime. So are the West Midlands Police tackling the problem — or is the force fiddling while Rome burns? Dominic Perry reports.
The initial brief for this investigation was to look into allegations that the West Midlands Police (WMP) was manipulating the way it reports truck crime in order to place the blame for the problem on the industry.
For example, an offence that was effectively a robbery where a driver was threatened with a weapon and forced from his cab would be recorded as a theft and classed as 'stolen with keys' by the WMP because technically the driver had 'left the truck unsecured'.This could then be used to shift the blame for the robbery back to the industry because a driver had made it easy for a thief to get away with the truck.
So, good news first: we didn't find any evidence that this happens.We were allowed to see the records for a dozen or so randomly selected cases, and where force had been used, the offence was correctly identified as a robbery, not as'stolen with keys'.
But there is some blurring of the boundaries when drivers have been tricked out of their cabs. This is often done by thieves who flash their lights at the driver as if to warn of a set of open rear doors or a missing number plate.The driver stops to investigate and is left watching helplessly as his truck disappears up the road. The WMP. specifically its Operation Indicate freight crime unit, records such incidents as 'stolen with keys' implying that the vehicle had been left unsecured.
This is a massively different scenario to a driver leaving his keys in the truck while he goes to pay for fuel or buy a bacon sandwich. but the crime statistics fail to differentiate between the two. One is clearly driver error, the other markedly less so, and it seems an injustice to lay all the blame for some of these offences involving deception on the transport industry
It's not ideal...
Police Constable Andy Round, Operation Indicate's sole permanent member of staff, agrees that the categorisation system is not ideal. He says: "When it's clearly a deception targeting an LGV then maybe I shouldn't include those at all [as 'stolen with keys'l."
However, he adds: "We've always had that [category]. If the driver gets out of the truck and there's no forced entry it counts as both 'unsecured' and 'stolen with keys'. The only person to blame there is the driver."
But we spoke to one force insider with almost 30 years' experience in the traffic division, who says that sometimes the figures are misreported at beat level. He explains:"If you have a serious robbery then you have to investigate it, but a theft of a motor vehicle is just one of those things. We manipulate the figures to suit ourselves. If you have a robbery you've got to put lots of effort into it."
He adds that incidents involving foreign drivers are also problematic as statements in languages as diverse as Russian and Hungarian are not always completely accurate.
Regardless of police reporting techniques, the West Midlands does have a serious problem with freight crime. Even Round seems resigned to the fact that his efforts are not making enough of a difference: do feel frustration. With a few more resources we could get on top of the problem. At the moment [freight crime] is almost a licence to print money "I try to make a difference at least I'm here as a contact for the industry.'They know I take it seriously but it has fallen off a bit in the last six months. Perhaps they're getting despondent; it must seem as though the force isn't taking [truck crime] seriously any more. I think it is but priorities are elsewhere: firearms, drugs and people trafficking. for instance."
Round is understandably loath to criticise his superiors, but there's no mistaking his air of dejection: "From [our] figures I'd say we aren't having an effect. The problem is that freight crime has fallen off the force agenda because there are no firearms involved. I wish I knew why.., last year it was on the force radar."
Crime fighting holiday A particularly damning indictment of police inaction is a text message that subscribers u Operation Indicate's SMS service receive recently: "No more alerts this week I'm o holiday. Apologies." Any time Round is awa_ the text message service (sponsored by cash-in transit firm Securitas to the tune of it 8,000 pe year) simply stops. Round himself is clearl embarrassed by this: "It's utterly ridiculou there's no need for it. If it happened in an other industry... I can understand how ridier bus people think it is.I have raised the issue h. who knows what they think. I'm despondent."
Sending these text messages is simplicity itself. says Round log on to the system and type in the message. Al! it requires is that someone spends an hour of their morning sifting though the previous night's crime reports. It speaks volumes that with a staff of about 12.000 people. not one man-hour can be freed up.
The problem. our insider explains, is one of parochialism, priorities and statistics. The first point, he says, is that neighbouring police forces are reluctant to investigate crimes committed outside their patch. So if a truck is stolen in,say. Staffordshire but the cab is found in the West Midlands and the trailer in the West Mercia police dream° one wants to take charge.
Our insider adds: "So there are three police forces involved. The crime is theft of a motor vehicle and the Staffordshire Police should come over here to investigate. But are they going to do that?
-What happens is that we write the crime off because we've got the vehicle back.
-The same thing applies with the trailer. Has inyone been hurt? No in 60-70% [of offences] :here's no violence, so it's not a robbery that the police] would have to investigate.
-We're very parochial. We all do our own .hing and the had guys use our boundaries to :heir advantage."
lie reckons that statistics or crime recording ire also partly responsible for the inaction. ['ruck crime falls into the same category of Afence as any other vehicle theft. So if thieves take off with a truck and trailer and its 00,000 ad, it is counted as the same category of ffence as a teenage tearaway stealing a £50 anger. If violence or firearms are used then it omes higher up the force priority list, other ise it's written off as just one of those things, ccording to our insider.
He concludes: The level of [truck crime] is cceptable [to the police] insurance compotes pay for it. The only person who ends up tting hurt is the haulier who pays higher remiums. I personally think it stinks. It's bad ews all round. but it's a fact of life." •