Organised crime gangs fuel big rise in burglary

Offences have nearly DOUBLED in parts of Britain in one year

ORGANISED criminal gangs are fuelling a huge upsurge in burglary – with offences almost doubling last year in some of the worst hit areas of Britain, the Daily Mail can reveal today.

Police believe that marauding gangs of thieves are spending weeks ransacking an area, before moving on to their next target.

Some of the gangs include suspects from Eastern Europe and even South America.

One senior Scotland Yard officer said that gangs were now sleeping up to 15 to a room in short-term rented homes as they shared details of vulnerable nearby properties in secret text and WhatsApp groups.

An analysis of official figures reveals that some of the nation’s wealthiest areas have been hardest hit by the rise in offences.

In Surrey, residents endured a 78 per cent increase in burglary crimes, closely followed by Hampshire (74 per cent) and Wiltshire (69 per cent). In Durham, burglary offences increased by 61 per cent in the year to the end of September, with Lincolnshire and Suffolk both suffering a 60 per cent rise.

Supt Sean Wilson, the lead officer for tackling burglary at the Metropolitan Police, Britain’s biggest force, said that the days of the ‘opportunist’ burglar were fading. He said organised gangs were ‘far more sophisticated’ and were using social media to find victims and mobile phones to co-ordinate their crimes.

Every police force in the country is now understood to be drawing up a list of its most prolific suspects in a bid to stem the flood.

In Nottinghamshire, chiefs have declared burglary a priority and set up two dedicated burglary squads for the first time.

But in Derby some homeowners are taking it in turns to stay awake at night to guard their properties after a spate of burglaries. They are also carrying out daytime patrols following 30 raids on homes in the Littleover and Blagreaves areas so far this year.

Research by the Mail lays bare for the first time the full scale of how the burglary crime wave is causing misery across the nation. The latest official figures showed there were almost 262,000 domestic burglaries last year, a rate of one every other minute. But a breakdown reveals some of the hardest hit areas include some of the wealthiest towns, suburbs and villages.

Among them are Durham, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, South Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire where thousands of extra offences took place. In recent weeks police have also warned of burglary spates in Portsmouth, Newquay, south Wales, Batley, Chester and Winchester.

Organised criminal gangs, some using high performance cars with false plates, have been blamed for raids in Derbyshire, Wales, London, and East Anglia. The statistics were backed by a separate recent analysis by an insurance company which found the GU3 postcode in Guildford, Surrey, topped burglary claim hotspots.

Supt Wilson said thieves were taking cash, jewellery, prestige vehicles, phones and laptops, moving much of it abroad within days.

Some police forces have faced criticism in recent years for their response, or lack of a response, to crimes of burglary. Guidelines issued by the Metropolitan Police last year appeared to suggest that burglaries should only be looked into if the thieves used violence to gain entry or tricked their way in.

Leicestershire Police sparked a row after announcing they would only send forensics teams to probe attempted burglaries at homes with even, but not odd, numbers. Police stress that although burglary rates have risen over the last 18 months, they remain far below those seen in the mid-1990s. And they insist they are now arresting suspects in ‘record numbers’ as they use extra patrols, specialist detectives and undercover operations to track them down.

Senior officers insist they investigate every crime. They also blamed part of the increase on a change to how crimes are counted, with shed, garage and outhouses included in ‘domestic’ burglaries from April 2017.

But Supt Wilson said the overall increase is not down to the change. And he said victims may attract criminals by ‘showing off’ their possessions on social media which can be a ‘shop window’ for burglars.

He added that burglars, who are generally young men, know how technology can be exploited and said owners of top-end cars should consider keeping remote key fobs in tinfoil-lined cups to stop their signal being jammed or misused.

Amanda Blakeman, who is the national lead on tackling ‘acquisitive crime’, insisted ‘opportunists’ are still responsible for the majority of burglaries. The West Mercia deputy chief constable said the increase is partly driven by the change in how crimes are counted and should also be put ‘in the context of massive reductions’ over the past two decades.

She urged householders to help themselves by following common crime prevention advice, including marking and photographing their property. ‘It is a small proportion of people who are committing these offences,’ she said. ‘We know there are individuals who are prolific and commit many offences when the opportunity arises.’