The kind of people that come to Nairnshire to do a bit of thieving

At the River CC meeting on Wednesday night the Community Safety officer from the local division of the Scottish Police Force was present. Although we live in an area that has traditionally had a low crime rate he made an appeal for residents to secure their properties and vehicles. He said:

“I’m forever finding places where I find keys in car ignitions, doors open and  I know this area command has traditionally been an area of low crime. It does lend itself to be easily targeted by thieves that I personally have come across as far away as Liverpool.”

He went on to describe how he’d stopped individuals driving towards Elgin on the A95 who claimed to be returning to Liverpool despite the fact they were equipped with Satnav. He continued: “results of enquiries led to their subsequent arrest and return to the Falkirk area where they were wanted by police down there.

What it does show is that these particular individuals are prepared to travel huge distances overnight, sleep in their vehicles therefore not show any kind of financial footprint in any particular location so we can’t see where they have been. Only through various other methods are we able to track the papers of the car but then again they use false plates to disguise the vehicles […] They generally use generic type  vehicles, white van, red van. Something that is commonly used throughout the commercial area. They will then hit a place or hit an area, or wait in an area where there are potential items to steal and then in a period of maybe 24hrs hit, hit, hit, hit and then disappear out of the area. The actual opportunity to try to either capture the individuals concerned or the property that is subsequently taken is fairly narrow.”

The officer went on to state that one advantage was that there are a relatively small number of north-south roads out of the area command. In response to the question: “Have these people got a common language he replied:

”For the record I’d probably say no. It would be fair to say that it’s not specific to any section of the community. These persons that are responsible for these thefts that have been traced to date they are form a varied background. It would be unfair to stereotype the persons responsible. It would be fair to say that these individuals are very, very adept at what they do. They are very able in the way that they are able to steal things. They are able to portray themselves sometimes as maybe as certain sections of the community. I’ve come across certain individuals who have tried to portray themselves as Irish travellers when in actual fact they’ve been from Manchester and had no connection with Ireland whatsoever at all. So they try and disguise themselves. I’ve see other people who have claimed to be Italian and they ended up being from Falkirk or the Central Belt area but they’ve been trying to disguise and clearly try to push the authorities towards a stereotype which obviously steers them away from the true individuals that they are.”