AVCIS Driving Forward to Tackle Freight and Haulage Crime

The aim is to raise awareness of multi-million pound freight crime that is prevalent across the UK and encourage Police Forces and the freight industry to tackle this organised crime together.

In this renewed and exciting initiative AVCIS Freight will be driving forward collaborations between UK police forces, the haulage and distribution industry and insurers to deprive organised gangs of this type of criminal activity and apprehend those involved.

The team provides clear operational benefits to police forces around the country. With criminal’s actively targeting freight and road haulage, the Freight Team gathers, researches and highlights information relating to this organised criminality, that in turn affects the supply chain of goods and materials that have a major impact on the UK economy.

The Home Office published the most recent official data on cargo theft in 2013, reporting 324,000 crimes had taken place nationwide in 2012. European statistics from Freight Watch International (FWI) now list the UK as the third worst place for cargo theft in Europe.

The Freight Team are one section of the ACPO Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (AVCIS). AVCIS is a dedicated vehicle crime unit that is committed to reducing vehicle and vehicle enabled crime across the country. The unit conducts criminal investigations, prosecutes offenders and has recovered vehicles valued in excess of £17 million in the past two and a half years. Whilst this in itself is an impressive achievement, AVCIS are aware that more needs to be done to both prevent and detect this criminal activity.

The hashtag #truckcrime awareness will be used to support discussions and encourage industry engagement via Twitter.

AVCIS Spokesperson Mark Colley said:

“This is a great opportunity to raise issues that are essential to our economic wellbeing and to making the roads safer environments for all. We want to work with industry to build effective partnerships and to help reduce the level of truck and freight crime in the UK.”