Avon & Somerset Police have announced that on Thursday 29 April 2010 between 10am and 3pm the Neighbourhood Policing Team will be at Curry’s on Channons Hill to promote Immobilise.com. Members of the public will have the opportunity to register goods, such as mobile phones, iPods, etc and speak with local officers about any concerns they may have.
For more infromation please go to: http://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk
Merseyside Police Community Support & Traffic Officers (PCS&TO’s) Derek Johnston and Natalie O’Neill were manning a police pod at Maghull Central Square last month, giving shoppers the opportunity to register their mobile phones with the National Property Register called Immobilise.
Natalie O’Neill said:
This means that if your phone is lost or stolen it will be easily identifiable and can be returned to its rightful owner.
Derek Johnston said that the day had proven well worthwhile:
We were getting roughly 20 people an hour visiting the pod to register their mobile phones. In fact, the event went so well that we have decided to organise an other Immobilise event in the Melling area in a few weeks time.
Merseyside Police are urging people to make their mobile phones less attractive to would-be thieves by immobilising them.
Merseyside Police has adopted the Immobilise system – a property-registering scheme that aims to make life as difficult as possible for thieves. The aim of the scheme is to encourage members of the public to register their mobiles on the National Mobile Database.
As part of a crime prevention initiative, PCSOs from Maghull are encouraging people to bring along their mobile telephones to Maghull Police Station for registering.
To read the source story in full please go to: Merseyside Police
Greater Manchester police A6 NPT have teamed up with Currys Clearance centre, central retail park, and Immobilise.com to put together a free property marking day.
All customers that purchase electrical goods from the Currys Clearance Centre or any other store on Central Retail Park, on Saturday March 20th, will be entitled to have their new item property marked and added to the Immobilise.com database and it doesn’t stop there!! If you have older items that you would like property marked just bring them along to the store with proof of purchase and we will gladly add them to the data base and mark them, The Immobilise day continues the on going force priority on domestic burglary.
Bring your laptops, mobile phones, ipods and any other electrical goods to the Currys Clearance Centre, Central Retail Park, Ancoats, any time from 0900-1700 on Saturday 20th march 2010.
Immobilise.com is a Home office backed, free to use website where users can create an account of their household goods for free. In the unfortunate event of any of the items being stolen they can update their account and mark the item as stolen.
Immobilise.com is the first port of call for the police when trying to identify stolen goods and can increase the chances of them being returned to their rightful owner.
PCSO Burtoft had this to say about immobilise.com;
it really is a great idea, it increases the chances of stolen property being found by the Police and reclaimed, it also reduces the number of different avenues historically used by burglars to profit from their crime, oh and its free of charge
Thames Valley Police are continuing to encourage residents to protect their property and register valuables on Immobilise.com, the UK National Property Register.
The website is a free database, which is used by all police forces across the UK to help them return stolen property to rightful owners.
Register your personal property at www.immobilise.com so that, if your valuables get lost or stolen and police recover it, you’ll get it back. It could also help police officers to get the burglar or robber convicted.
It takes a few minutes to complete the registration, allowing you to create a free, private and secure portfolio of all your personal property.
Inspector Sean Hodgson, Force Crime Reduction Manager, said:
We are continuing to urge residents to register their property, it only takes a few minutes to register and if your property is stolen and recovered there is a greater chance of it being returned.
Becoming a victim of crime is an incredibly upsetting experience for people, especially if personal possessions such as cameras or mobile phones are stolen with irreplaceable photos of loved ones and phone numbers of family and friends.
We are asking residents to help us and help themselves by registering all their valuables on the Immobilise database. People can register any item with a serial number.
Police officers may then be able to return any items they find to their rightful owner. It may also enable officers to secure a successful prosecution.
Thames Valley Police is currently running an initiative specifically tackling burglary, called Operation Breaker. This Forcewide campaign received a £143,000 funding boost from the Home Office on 28 December as the national ‘Operation Vigilance campaign gets underway. Operation Vigilance aims to tackle and prevent burglary and personal robbery.
To visit the Thames Valley Police website please go to: www.thamesvalley.police.uk
BikeBiz (Carlton Reid) reported yesterday that a bike crime across Surrey has been reduced by a police sting operation that involved Marin’s UK distributor ATB Sales.
ATB supplied a new bike which was used as bait to catch cycle thieves in the act. The bike – a Marin hardtail – was chained to a set of railings in Guildford with an inferior lock to tempt the bike snatchers.
230 bikes had been stolen in the Guildford area in a three month period.
The operation was the brainchild of neighbourhood police officer Sean Burridge. He said:
ATB gave us a great bike and it was just what we needed. Bike crime over the past six months has fallen by 50 percent as a result of this and several other initiatives.
Ross Patterson, ATB’s sales and marketing director, said:
This operation highlights the need for good bike security and the merits of a strong lock.
The police put an Immobitag transponder in the bike’s frame. This allows them to identify stolen bikes and return to their rightful owners. ATB’s Platinum Care programme includes insurance and a subsidised purchase of a transponder device.
For more some very informative advice on bike security please go to: http://quickrelease.tv/?p=327
To read the source story please go to: BikeBiz
Three new design innovations to tackle mobile phone crime, including a device that locks a phone and alerts the owner if it is taken away from them, have been unveiled today. The prototypes were developed by teams of designers and technology experts as part of the Mobile Phone Security Challenge, an initiative from the Home Office Design and Technology Alliance and the Design Council, with support and funding from the Technology Strategy Board.
Although the adoption of the designs by the industry is by no means guaranteed, very few people disagree that more needs to be done to address crime relating to mobile phones and portable devices. Although overall crime has dropped since 1997, according to research performed by the University of Leicester, the type of crimes being committed has changed. Their findings suggest that a decade ago burglary was attractive to criminals as they would find households containing DVD players, videos etc that were easy to sell on. These days DVD players cost as little as £20 so have hardly any resale value.
As the phones and media devices we carry around with us have become more powerful, their values have increased and along with it their attractiveness to criminals.
Commenting on the research findings criminology lecturer James Treadwell said:
While we might have seen a decline in some types of crime, we have seen a rise in other forms of criminal activity, particularly young people who seem to be mugging one another
DVD players for example, got cheaper, certain consumer items became smaller and were very, very expensive and sought after, and so the latest mobile phone, or the latest iPod, which people carry about them, have become targets for robbers.
Mobile phone crime will never be an easy issue to address especially as devices become enabled for mobile payments, but new designs and initiatives like the Immobilise National Property Register / NMPR will continue to combat crime.
Links:
Immobilise National Property Register
Home Office: New technologies unveiled to help protect Britain’s 75m mobile phone users from crime
BBC News: Crime targets affected by drop in goods prices
Police in Bristol expect 1,000 homes to be burgled in the city in the next three months.
Bristol’s priority crime team want to reduce that number and prevent your home being one of those thousand, and to help they are launching a Spring burglary campaign.
Richard Kelvey, Detective Chief Inspector on the burglary team, said:
We know from previous statistics that there are likely to be 1,000 homes burgled in Bristol in the next three months.
We want to do everything we can to reduce that number and we are working hard but we need the public to be aware of how to make themselves and their homes less vulnerable to burglary.
Surprisingly, around 300 of all those burglaries expected to take place, will happen because someone forgets to lock a back door or leaves a window open. We know it is easily done when you are rushing to get out of the door for work or to get the kids to school – making the property insecure and giving thieves easy access.
Another method for burglars is smashing a small window or glass panel in a front or back door in order to put a hand through and unlock it – which is why keys should never be left in back doors or on nearby surfaces.
People are also advised to keep hard copy photos, receipts and descriptive records of their property as well registering it on national property database Immobilise so that it can be identified in the event it is stolen.
Councillor Gary Hopkins, Bristol City Council Cabinet Member for the Environment and Community Safety, said:
Although burglary rates are going down steadily we want to ensure everyone knows the simple precautions to take to reduce their chance of being burgled.
Avon & Somerset Police have some good tips to keep your home safe:
To read the source article in full please go to: Avon and Somerset Police
Thames Valley Police are urging the public to make it one of their New Year’s resolutions to register personal property on the UK National Property Register, Immobilise.
Did you receive a new mobile phone, camera, bike, MP3 player or ‘sat nav’ this Christmas?
They are recommending that the public should Register your personal property at Immobilise.com so that, if your valuables get lost or stolen and police recover it, you’ll get it back. It could also help police officers to get the burglar or robber convicted.
It takes a few minutes to complete the registration, allowing you to create a free, private and secure portfolio of all your personal property.
Inspector Sean Hodgson, Force crime reduction officer, said:
Becoming a victim of crime is an incredibly upsetting experience for people, especially if personal possessions such as cameras or mobile phones are stolen with irreplaceable photos of loved ones and phone numbers of family and friends.
We are asking residents to help us and help themselves by registering all their valuables on the Immobilise database. People can register any item with a serial number.
He added:
Police officers may then be able to return any items they find to their rightful owner. It may also enable officers to secure a successful prosecution.
To read the source article in full please go to: Thames Valley Police Website
In an expansion of the Immobitag cycle tagging scheme run by York Police, Operation Spoke is being launched by the YorkGuildhall Safer Neighbourhood Team, and officers hope thousands more bikes in York will registered in the coming weeks.
Complementing the Immobitag RF tag scheme, this additional initiative works by invisibly marking cycles with a unique registration number which will be stored on the Immobilise Property Register along with details of the cycle’s rightful owner.
PC Jonathan Hodgeon, one of the officers behind the scheme, said:
The unique number will be written on the bike in permanent UV pen, which officers can quickly scan in seconds, and if you don’t own the bike you will have to account for that.
This will help with city centre bike crime and also abandoned bikes will be able to be reunited with their owners. Along with Cycle City York, we are aiming to make bikes as well protected and identifiable as cars.
Sgt Jon Asvadi, who was also behind the launch, said:
There will be a lot of people saying that we are going back ten years with UV marking but it’s only through Safer York Partnership and City of York Council that we have been able to bring together the technology of UV pens, torches and the Immobilise website to create a process which is simple and quick and we know will be successful.
Sgt Asvadi said the data would be entered by vetted volunteers and special constables to ensure regular officers were not tied up.
Operation Spoke registration events will be held in York from January 13 to 17, in Parliament Street, on January 14, from 9am to 3pm, in Front Street, Acomb, on January 21, from 9am to 3pm at Oaklands Sports Centre, on January 23 at Tesco’s Askham Bar store, on January 20 and 21 at St Lawrence’s School and on January 22 and February 8 at the University of York.
To read the source article please go to: The York Press
The Manchester Messenger has reported that young people across Trafford are being urged to keep new gadgets received as Christmas presents out of sight to avoid becoming a victim of street crime.
Greater Manchester Police say January is a peak time for robberies and muggings as people step out with valuable new gifts such as mobile phones and MP3 players. Statistics also show young people are the most likely victims.
In January 2009 there were 56 robberies across Trafford compared to 32 the previous month.
Trafford Division’s crime reduction advisor, Eleanor Kelly, said:
We’re advising people to leave their valuables at home or keep them out of sight when they are out and about on the street, in parks and on public transport.
It’s worth remembering that while most people are out hunting for bargains in the sales, criminals may be on a spree of a different kind, especially in busy high street areas. Most robberies are opportunistic, so by keeping valuables out of view you can reduce your risk of becoming a target.
Also, remember to register your valuables on www.immobilise.com
To read the sources story in full please go to: www.messengernewspapers.co.uk