Agricultural and garden machinery thefts from Romsey

Every autumn, when the clocks go back and the days get shorter, we seem to hear of a rise in the number of burglaries.

An article in the Daily Mail on 1 November supports this perception by revealing that Police data confirms November is the month when we are most likely to be burgled.  They say there is a burglary every two minutes in November, and most of them happen between midnight and 1am (read full article here).

The recent Channel 4 series ‘Burgled’, identified that burglaries often follow a pattern that can relate to particular individuals or gangs.  Police officers interviewed stated that once certain individuals are reprimanded and detained, a whole urban area’s crime figures can plummet implying the burglary epidemic was probably a one man crime-wave.

CIA has a customer in Romsey where there has been a spate of burglaries which follow the same pattern.  Thieves have been stealing agricultural or large garden machinery from outbuildings in the middle of the night.  Five or so incidents have happened in Lockerley where our customer lives.

Our customer believes they were targeted during the early hours of Sunday 27 October.  The next day, they discovered that a padlock, on the gate that secured the field adjacent to their property, had been cropped and a large hole had been cut out of their wire fence from the field, presumably as an easy get-away with the machinery.  The passive infra-red sensor floodlights had also been tampered with but not before they were caught on CCTV.

It appears the thieves abandoned their attempt when they were unable to penetrate the outbuilding’s steel door but it seems they had plans to try again.  Days later, a neighbour noticed a man photographing the house’s electric gates but he drove off at speed before he could be challenged.  The vehicle number was taken down and has been passed on to the police who are investigating this.

At this point, feeling vulnerable, our customer called us in and we were happy to help.  We carried out a review of his security arrangements and are installing a much more advanced video surveillance system connected to our RVRC (remote video response centre) as well as extending the monitored alarm system to cover the outbuildings as well as their home. They can now sleep easy at night again, knowing that his home and his outbuildings are secure.  It’s hoped that, if the villains return, the better lenses and higher resolution cameras will capture unmistakable images that are indisputable in court.

The customer said, “We’ve had great service from CIA for about 30 years now, so they were the natural choice.” they went on to say, “As usual, we’re very happy with the service we’ve received this time.”

If you’ve noticed any suspicious or unexplained behaviour in the greater Romsey area, we recommend you contact the Police without delay, and if you need any advice about increasing your own security, please do give us a call.

• Rural theft cost an estimated £42.3m in the UK during 2012 ¹
• Tools, quad bikes and fuel were the three most commonly targeted items according to a nation-wide survey ²
• Community watch schemes (60%) and social media such as Twitter (47%) are the most widely used methods for communicating crime alerts and information within communities surveyed²

¹ Estimates for the overall cost of rural crime based on NFU Mutual claims experience as insurer of C70% of rural market (overall cost of rural crime in 2011 estimated at £52.7m).

² Based on a survey of 220 NFU Mutual agencies conducted in July 2013.