Car Crime UK (2009)

Tonight’s programme looks at how police in Manchester are dealing with a huge increase in criminals who break into houses to steal keys to expensive cars and then use them to commit other crimes. Officers in the Tameside area of the city raid the home of a serial car thief, a man who has given them the slip many times before and who this time tries to get away over the rooftops of a housing estate. Meanwhile police in Devon and Cornwall are tackling another mobile problem; drug dealers who use car to move their goods from A to B. The cops here use number plate recognition technology to identity the dealers and stop them, and tonight they find more than they bargained for. The programme features the work of three specific car crime teams: The Neighbourhood Task Force in Stockport, The ANPR Intercept Team from Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and the Burglary Task Force from Tameside, East Manchester. In Greater Manchester last year nearly fifteen thousand cars were stolen out of the estimated one hundred and seventy thousand stolen across the UK

In the second episode of the series, Car Crime UK follows the police on a high-speed car chase through residential streets, captures the moment the cops carry out a roadside drugs bust and films undercover officers as they intercept a stolen 4x4.

The programme features the work of three specific car crime teams: The Burglary Task Force from Tameside, East Manchester. The ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) Intercept Team based in Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and the Neighbourhood Task Force in Stockport, who focus in on how drug dealers are using cars to transport drugs. The drugs trade in the UK is worth an estimated eight billion pounds a year, and drug dealers and traffickers use the nation’s road network to transport the majority of their drugs

The programme features the work of three specific car crime teams: The Burglary Task Force from Tameside, East Manchester. The Lothian & Borders Road Crime Reduction Unit based in Edinburgh and the Neighbourhood Task Force in Stockport, all of whom are experts in finding prolific car and bike thieves. Motorbike theft is on the rise in the UK, thieves are targeting bikes more as opposed to cars because they tend to have less elaborate security systems and because they can easily be put into the backs of vans.

The programme features the work of three specific car crime teams: The Neighbourhood Task Force in Stockport and the ANPR Intercept Teams from Devon and Cornwall and London. The programme follows Sergeant Andy Torkington and PC Colin Mason in Stockport, Greater Manchester as they assist with an early morning raid on a flat belonging to a man wanted for car theft. The team enter the flat using a wham ram to break down the door and arrest two men, plus Sergeant Torkington doles out an £80 fine to a neighbour who’s causing trouble.

This programme features the work of specific car crime teams: The Burglary Task Force from Tameside, East Manchester. The Lothian & Borders Road Crime Reduction Unit based in Edinburgh, the Neighbourhood Task Force in Stockport and the CO15 ANPR Intercept Team in London. Persistent offenders are responsible for the majority of all crime in the UK – just 100,000 criminals commit over half of all crimes, approximately five million crimes each year. The most common crimes for persistent offenders to commit are burglary and car crime, so the country’s specialist car crime teams have a particular interest in finding their worst offenders.