Big fall in car crime in Birkenhead as police foil scrap metal operation

Nov 5 2008 by Matt Hurst, Birkenhead News

CAR crime in Birkenhead dropped by almost 50% between April and October this year, after officers disturbed an operation targeting older vehicles to sell for scrap.

Birkenhead neighbourhood inspector Mick Blease told the News thieves were switching their attention from modern cars, as new technology made them almost impossible to steal.

Instead, the force found reports of stolen vehicles seemed to concern a disproportionate number of pre-1998 cars - but when efforts were made to recover them, they were nowhere to be found.

Inspector Blease said: “Previously, it would mainly be joyriders taking cars.

“We’d find vehicles round the corner, and always recover them, because they aren’t worth more than a quick joy ride.

“But we weren’t getting them back, so we started to look deeper and identified that it was all attributable to the increase in scrap metal prices.

“We looked through the scrap dealers and found one in Wirral that was even taking vehicles from North Wales and outlying areas.”

The discovery has made such an impact on figures that between April and October this year 57 fewer cars were reported stolen in Birkenhead, Tranmere and Rock Ferry, compared to a total of 122 over the same period in 2007.

Led by Birkenhead’s neighbourhood unit, police also found cars were being lifted straight from the road onto a flatbed truck and sold for scrap, locked, without the necessary registration documents or even a key.

Inspector Blease said: “We identified one car that would sell in the paper for £1,000, working and no problems.

“A scrap metal dealer bought it for £300, with no registration or log book, cubed it and sent it off on the boat to China.”

Investigations have since uncovered scrap dealers taking more than 200 cars in a six week period.

As well as a number of arrests, the decrease in thefts is a result of tightening licences, to ensure scrapyards only buy vehicles when accompanied by log books and photographic identification.