Car stolen in North Worcestershire burglary – Lessons to be learnt

Police are appealing for information about a burglary near Redditch in which a car and other items were stolen.

It happened at a house in The Park, Hewell Grange, between 8am and 6pm on Tuesday, 18th June.

The offenders smashed a rear patio door, causing £400 worth of damage, and took a red Toyota Aygo, registration SP10 TEV, worth £5,000, after finding the spare keys. They also took a set of GHD hair straighteners worth £100, a silver Acer laptop worth £400, a Nikon digital camera worth £700, a Samsung camcorder (police do not have a value for this item), and a Cube Peloton cycle worth £1,200.

House to house inquiries are taking place.

Detective Constable Jim Guinivan of West Mercia Police said: “We hope that as the burglary happened during the daytime, someone may have heard or seen something. We would also be very keen to hear from anyone who noticed the vehicle being driven away from the area, has seen it since, or who knows where it might be now.”

Witnesses or anyone with information are asked to contact DC Guinivan on the non-emergency number 101 quoting incident 441-s-180613 or ring the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

TCPW Comment: So, based on what we’ve been told and knowing about common MOs used in burglary we can make the following assumptions:

• The thief or thieves have gained access to the rear of the house via the side as Google shows the properties here to be mostly semi-detached 
• Some of the properties face an open field, so the property burgled might be one of these as there would be fewer potential witnesses
• The crime occurred during daylight hours yesterday and so if most people were out at work there would be very few potential witnesses about 
• The thieves have found something in the garden or brought something with them to smash the glass in the patio door
• The glass was probably ordinary toughened safety glass, which is dead easy and quiet to break with the right tool. We don’t know if they’ve then opened the patio door or simply walked through the gap where the glazing was, but I suspect the latter
• The dwelling either did not have an alarm or it was not set 
• They’ve not only stolen a range of valuable goods, but because they found the spare car keys they took the car and bike as well
• Based on data recorded by this website there is only about a 20% chance that the property has been marked using a property marking system of some kind
• The chance of the same house being burgled again during the next six weeks is considerably higher than it was prior to having this burglary.  Repeat victimisation theory also suggests that the chances of the neighbours getting burgled have also increased and this increase in chance gradually reduces with distance from the burgled property up to 400 metres in both directions. (This final point is based on Professor Ken Pease’s work on repeat victimisation)

We need not spell out the obvious tactics that might have been used by the householder to deter the thieves but it is extremely important that the victim and the victim’s neighbours do something now to mitigate the now higher probability of a repeat burglary.

Let’s also hope that DC Jim Guinivan gets a lucky break

Original press release: West Mercia Police: http://www.westmercia.police.uk/news/news-articles/car-stolen-in-north-worcestershire-burglary.html