HIDDEN THEFTS
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• This week Commercial Motor attended a conference to record the progress of Car Crime Prevention Year 1992, along with dozens of police officers, security equipment manufacturers and a junior Home Office minister.
Not once in the entire 90-minute programme was the word truck mentioned. And there was no reference to theft of commercial vehicles or their cargoes. It really does sum up what many hauliers suspect — that the Home Office is so busy trying to publicise its success against car crime it's completely forgotten that trucks 'are being stolen at an alarming rate and nobody's getting caught doing it.
To hear the rather smug presentation you'd think the thieves were on the way to being licked. During the eight months since CCPY 1992 was launched it seems there has been "substantial progress".
Try telling that to the hundreds of operators who during the same period called us with stories of stolen vehicles for our Crimeline pages. "Substantial" isn't the word they'd use.
Given the fact that a stolen truck and its freight will inevitably be worth more than a car it's time the Home Office stopped pandering to the masses.
Fortunately CM managed to penetrate the scrum of radio and TV people around Home Office minister Michael Jack to remind him of the ommission and present him with every Crimeline page produced since February along with a letter calling on Home Secretary Kenneth Baker to set up a nationwide Police task force to combat truck theft. We await his reply.
According to Jack: "The difficulty here is to get the sharpness of focus." Actually minister, it's not difficult at all. It's simply a matter of priorities and determination.