26
Jan
2016
By Calvin at 11:29 GMT, 10 years ago
Excellent work yet again by West Midlands Police! You always know when the police service has done some excellent crime prevention work, because they get criticised in the media!!!!
What’s all the fuss? Well, a few police officers and PCSOs engaged in a crime prevention campaign called ‘#stoleninseconds’ did the rounds in Coventry City looking out for insecure homes. If they found a front door (or whatever) unlocked they would call out to see if someone was at home and if there was no reply they would enter the house to ensure that the place hadn’t been burgled – in my mind all legal by the way and something I would have done myself when on the beat in Acton back in the 80s. In fact it’s something that police officers do routinely except they rarely publicise it.
In this case, to make the most of social media and to demonstrate just how careless some people can be, they posted up pictures of themselves in people’s hallways, standing by open back alley gates, unlocked doors and windows etc announcing the fact that one more home had been found insecure and the owner had been traced to come back to secure it. Personally I wouldn't have circulated pictures of the inside of homes, but I would certainly have done so of open doors windows and so on.
At this point it is worth me pointing out that around 20% of homes that get burgled are insecure (doors and windows left unlocked/open) and if people would simply check their places before going out or going to bed at night we could wipe around 120,000 burglaries a year off the total!
Once the police started to post up the pictures and their comments so the ‘top crime experts’ on Twitter began to come back with their tweets saying things such as “If you enter my home like this, don’t be surprised if I use reasonable force when I hear you” and “Cops can only legally enter without warrant to save life or prevent serious damage to property”. The latter point is interesting insomuch as it would be difficult to know if someone’s life was at risk or serious damage was being caused unless police entered the insecure property to find out! Had the police found the door open and not checked and someone had been seriously assaulted inside and in need of urgent medical attention then the police would have been justifiably criticised for neglecting their duty – you can’t have it both ways. But then there are a number of people out there who, at the drop of a hat, simply love to criticise the police.
Even Sky’s Sunrise sports presenter, Jacquie Beltrao, threw her pennyworth in this morning (as the news team were reviewing the newspapers) when she said something along the lines of ‘surely they’ve got something better to do with their time’. How many times have I heard that comment before! The prevention of crime is and always has been the primary objective of the police.
Eamonn Holmes (on the same programme) took a difference stance and suggested that people were pretty thick when it came to home security. He pointed out that having grown up in Northern Ireland he was very much aware of how important it was to keep your home secure. Such balanced comments from the Sky News team as we’ve come to expect.
I suppose the point is this. If you want to go out and leave your home open to burglars then that is your right. If you have home contents insurance you won’t be able to claim, but then you’ll probably already know that, so that’s fine. The vast majority of people, however, don’t live like this and would welcome contact from the police if their home had been found insecure – as indeed proved to be the case (See link to BBC article below).
So, well done again to Coventry City Police for highlighting this issue and shame on you if you could think of nothing better than to criticise our hardworking, well-intentioned police service who were going about their duty and preventing crime.
Incidentally, this sort of initiative goes on all the time around the UK and I remember one force that put helium inflated balloons through open windows with cards attached pointing out that ‘this time it was a balloon, but next time it could be a burglar!’
Routine is all you need and if you follow the link below you’ll find my handy KOPCAR system for locking up at night when a lot of these burglaries through unlocked or insecure doors and windows take place.
KOPCAR Security routine at night http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/home-security-assessment/711/security-routine-at-night/
BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-35400694
