Builders beware - thieves trying van doors

[bobbsy]

Just watched a green sedan, reg I think KD04 YFW, pull up in front of a building site across the road. 2 youths jumped out, dressed in "builder-ish" clothes, baseball caps, and with yellow hi-vis gloves on, and tried the doors on the van parked in front of the site. All locked, they started to look into the front yard before a builder appeared and they jumped back in the car and it sped off. Driver didn't exit the car. Was fast and efficient (although in this case unsuccessful).

[Sue]

Did you call the police with the details of the car?

Sorry to keep banging on about calling the police, but posting on here isn't going to reduce crime. Telling the police about the incident might, so hopefully you did :)

[ianr]

I did actually mention the URL of this thread in some online feedback I provided on the Met. website the morning this thread started. I was pointing out the difficulty someone starting at their "something-youve-seen-or-heard" page https://www.met.police.uk/tua/tell-us-about/soh/something-youve-seen-or-heard would have in arriving at what looked like a suitable place. I suspected that most people would count this as a suspicious activity rather than a crime and find themselves without a category in which to enter any information.

I'd personally have deemed it as a crime -- in this case attempted theft - even though it would be arguable that the perp had not passed the preparatory stage (as per https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/inchoate-offences ), and in any case with very little chance of a successful prosecution -- just in order to make the report. But as it turned out that the registration number isn't known to DVLA ( https://www.gov.uk/check-vehicle-tax ), so either misremembered or false plates, I didn't think anything more from me there would be appropriate or likely to be useful.

Had I witnessed the event, I think I'd have made it an immediate 999 call, so that possibly a local alert was broadcast, just possibly a vehicle and occupants matching the report was spotted soon thereafter by a free unit, possibly a stop-and-search was thought both justifiable and likely to be profitable, ... .