Spike of Thefts in Underground Car Parks

Latest police update from the Brentford ward team

Burglary
October and November saw a rise in burglaries with 14 and 15 respectively (compared to 9 and 5 in the same months last year). These were spread across the ward and led to us using targeted patrols to deter and detect offenders. We use a predictive policing tool which helps with this, but it took a while to have an effect. December saw the number of offences drop to 8. Sadly this has been more by deterrent as we are still working on prosecutions for offenders.

Graffiti
There has been a significant rise in graffiti across the ward and also into Syon along the High Street. The vandals have been “tagging” some prime locations and we have worked with the local authority to clear these as quickly as possible. Our main aim is to identify who the culprits are. We are working at narrowing down the times so that we can watch the local authority CCTV that covers the area to pick out the suspects as they come and go.

They have tagged within site of cameras, but these do not always point in the right direction, but they can catch them either coming to the crime scene or away from it. We are sourcing a mobile camera to fit in spots that are not covered by CCTV and that are favoured by those causing this damage. We have had some good responses and help from the community, but what we need is a much clearer picture of when they are doing the damage and any descriptions of the suspects.

We are working with British Transport Police and Safer Transport police to match the tags with any they have on their routes which may help in leading us to arrest those responsible.

Theft from motor vehicles
We saw a significant spike in thefts from cars since October with a recent high of 27 offences in November (there were 13 in the same month the previous year). The criminals have been targeting underground car parks which are out of view and with little or no CCTV. They predominantly use mopeds to get to the locations and back again as they know this gives them mobility, allows them to slip past any barriers and they know that they can escape from us by using footpaths and alleyways and our policy is not to pursue them.

This is becoming a London wide problem of moped enabled crime and we are trying to find effective ways to combat it. We have been using the Borough's “HIT” team, which is plain clothed officers proactively targeting the hot spots and this had had an effect (only 14 offences in December) and we are going to be maintaining these targeted patrols for the next month

January 22, 2016