‘Bait lorry’ targeted HGV thieves in Lutterworth
A lorry filled with fake goods has been used by Leicestershire police to target gangs stealing from heavy goods vehicles (HGVs).
The force used the lorry, loaned to them by a haulier, as bait on the A5 near Lutterworth.
The area has seen 45 HGVs targeted by thieves over the past three years, police said.
Police worked with TruckPol, a road freight crime unit, on the operation but the vehicle was not targeted.
Warning to thieves
Det Sgt Sue Coutts, from TruckPol, said: “Road freight crime is organised, increasingly violent and market driven.
“Organised criminals respond to demand, travelling the length and breadth of the country to steal goods and vehicles,” she said.
“Their methods range from curtain slash thefts to aggressive robbery and hijackings.”
TruckPol’s figures show 1604 LGVs were stolen in the UK in 2009, with 2552 in 2010 – an increase of more than 50%, with 66 HGVs stolen in Leicestershire in 2010.
Caught out
Leicestershire Constabulary worked with The Harborough District Community Safety Partnership to set up the surveillance in Magna Park, close to a distribution centre used by lorries as an overnight stop.
Officers loaded the HGV with fake goods and installed equipment to alert police if the vehicle was broken in to.
Police said the lorry was parked in a lay-by for six nights during November and December, but was not targeted.
Despite this, police said the operation had been a success and they had gathered useful intelligence, as well as arresting two men on suspicion of theft of diesel.
Sgt Steve Bunn, who is in charge of the local neighbourhood team, said: “Previous campaigns have focused on educating and warning drivers who park in lay-bys.
“This was our effort to take the fight back to the criminal by deploying techniques to catch them in the act of stealing from the lorry.”
Source: BBC News
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Reinvented serious crime squad could lose staff
The setting up of the NCA is described as the most radical change to policing in 50 years.
The new organisation set up during a major overhaul of British policing to tackle the country’s most dangerous gangs will probably lose some of the staff currently fighting serious organised crime, its new head said yesterday.
Keith Bristow said that 3,850 people had the right to transfer to the National Crime Agency (NCA) from two bodies set to be scrapped under the Government’s reorganisation, but the numbers were likely to be lower because of budget cuts.
The NCA, which is expected to start operations next year, has not yet had a budget set. It is due to take over from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) – set up by Tony Blair in 2006 – and its functions will include tackling organised crime, protecting children and fighting fraud. It could take on other duties including the national counter-terrorism role from the Metropolitan Police after the Olympic Games as part of what has been described as the most radical change to policing in 50 years.
Mr Bristow, named as first director-general last year, told MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee that the “workforce will have a right of transfer but of course at a time when budgets are reducing the workforce”.
He said there would “probably” be fewer people transferring to NCA from Soca than work there now. But he said the Government could still add extra roles to the new organisation in the future.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The NCA will transform our response to organised crime and confront the serious criminality that threatens the safety and security of the UK. It will have full resources available to deliver this crucial role.”
Mr Bristow, who will move from being Chief Constable of Warwickshire, said he would seek to strip dangerous criminals of status symbols such as cars and jewellery to stop them from being idolised by youngsters.
Source: The Independent
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Hope for family of murdered waiter as prosecutor agrees to meeting after 14 years
The family of a man stabbed to death, whose unsolved murder led him to become known as “Scotland’s Stephen Lawrence”, has welcomed the announcement that the country’s top law officer will meet them.
Surjit Singh Chhokar, a 32-year-old waiter, was stabbed through the heart outside his Overtown, Lanarkshire, home in November 1998. Three men faced charges in two trials, but none was found guilty of his murder.
A subsequent inquiry found elements of institutional racism within Strathclyde Police and the prosecution service, with Scotland’s Lord Advocate at the time admitting his office had failed Mr Chhokar’s family.
The Chhokars’ lawyer, Aamer Anwar, said yesterday the family were cautiously encouraged that Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland and Solicitor General Lesley Thomson would meet them over their quest to have the investigation reopened.
“It’s a step forward, an encouraging and refreshing change from the attitude of the authorities over a decade ago,” he said. “But they’re well aware it’s been 13 long, hard years. This is about one simple word, justice, and we’re a long way away from that.”
He said momentum had been building around the case since The Independent profiled the murder 11 days ago in the wake of the Lawrence verdicts, in a front-page campaign along with three other victims of unsolved and suspected racist attacks. “There have always been parallels, and the family have always hoped that if it could happen in the case of Stephen then it could happen with theirs,” he said.
Graeme Pearson, Assistant Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police at the time of the killing and now a Member of the Scottish Parliament, said the family hoped that the recent repeal of Scotland’s double jeopardy laws would allow the case to be revisited in court. He supported the family’s appeal for witnesses, or those with any other information, to come forward and provide evidence. “The double jeopardy legislation indicates there should be a new element in a case that makes it worthy of returning to the courts,” he said. “Hopefully that’s what we’ll see come out of this.”
Local man Ronnie Coulter, now 43, was tried first, but was acquitted of murder in 1999, after blaming his nephew Andrew Coulter, now 30, and David Montgomery, 34. A year later, Andrew Coulter and Mr Mongomery went on trial, but they blamed Ronnie Coulter and were acquitted.
Mr Anwar said the family’s expectations were that Strathclyde police would take the same approach they had adopted in pursuing Lawrence’s killers, and launch a high-profile campaign for information.
While advances in forensic science were promising, the crucial information could just as likely come from local witnesses. “We believe that there must be individuals who saw what happened that night. Either through fear or some other reason they failed to come forward,” he said.
“These individuals may be the key, but if the Crown Office and police do not offer the window of opportunity, then we will never know.”
Mr Anwar said that Mr Chhokar’s father, Darshan Singh Chhokar, had developed cancer after the acquittals, and had recently fallen ill again.
Source: The Independent
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Birmingham double murder: man arrested over couple’s death
A 24-year-old man has been arrested by police investigating the murder of a couple found dead in their home.
The bodies of Avtar Kolar, 62, and his wife Carole, 58, were discovered at their home in Handsworth Wood, Birmingham, by their policeman son on Wednesday morning.
Jason Kolar, a serving officer with West Midlands Police, had visited the address to check on them after family members were unable to make contact.
Post-mortem tests confirmed the couple died as a result of “blunt force trauma” to the head and that both had been struck a number of times.
West Midlands Police said the man was arrested at a house in Birmingham on Friday night.
He has been taken to a police station in the West Midlands where he is being questioned on suspicion of murder.
The couple had four children and eight grandchildren.
At an emotional press conference on Thursday two of the children made a desperate plea for help to catch their killers.
Michelle Kirwan, 39, described them as “the sweetest, kindest people that I have ever met”.
She added: “Our hearts are broken forever and our lives will never be the same.”
Her 32-year-old brother, also called Avtar, said: “We are now reaching out to anybody out there who could please, please help.
“No matter how little or however much they can, somebody out there knows who did this, so please I beg of you help us catch the person or people who has taken these two most special people away from us.”
A team of more than 60 officers has been assigned to the case and Detective Superintendent Richard Baker, who is leading the murder investigation, vowed to work “around the clock” to find the couple’s killers.
Mr Baker said: “This was a horrendous attack. We continue to follow a number of lines of inquiry and we thank those who have called us so far.
“We encourage anyone with information to speak to us no matter how insignificant they feel the detail is.”
Crimestoppers said the double murder was a “vile crime” and put up a reward of up to £10,000 for details leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators.
Police have repeatedly refused to speculate about a motive for the murders, but said detectives are looking into a number of lines of inquiry, including a rise in burglaries and gold thefts in the area.
Speaking earlier this week, Mr Baker said a possible link between Jason Kolar’s position with the force and his parents’ death was “not a significant line of inquiry”.
He said: “Clearly his role as a police officer has established himself as a line of inquiry but what I can say at this time is there is nothing to suggest at all that Jason’s role as a police officer has anything to do with the motive in relation to this investigation.”
Source: The Telegraph
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Police officer discovers his parents murdered
A possible revenge motive is being considered in a murder investigation after a police officer found his parents dead at their home in Birmingham.
Avtar Singh Kolar and his wife, Carole, 58, were discovered at a house in the Handsworth Wood area of the city yesterday morning.
They were last heard from on Tuesday night, when a family member spoke to Ms Kolar. Police said there had been “no issues” at the time.
But at 8am yesterday their son, a serving officer with West Midlands Police, went to the house after his parents failed to answer the phone, and found their bodies. Police are appealing to the local community for information about the killing and are not ruling out suggestions that it might be a revenge attack related to the son’s profession.
“We are in the really early stages of the investigation and we are keeping an open mind about a possible motive,” Detective Superintendent Richard Baker, of West Midlands Police, said.
When asked if it might be a revenge attack he said: “We are looking at that as a possibility but we have no information to suggest it is the case at this stage.”
The couple had four children.
Source: The Independent
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Police to exhume ‘nude in the nettles’ body
Police investigating an infamous unsolved mystery are to exhume the remains of an unidentified woman whose body was found at a beauty spot more than three decades ago.
Detectives at North Yorkshire Police have been given permission to disinter a woman whose naked body was discovered at a roadside in 1981 in what became known as the ‘Nude in the Nettles’ case.
They hope to obtain a DNA sample which could help identify the woman and provide the major breakthrough they need to find out how she died.
The case was officially recorded as an “unexplained incident” by the Home Office in 1981, but detectives are understood to be investigating the possibility that she was murdered.
Experts have been assessing the cemetery site since early November to determine the best way to disinter the woman’s remains.
Plans for the exhumation are due to be formally announced and the exercise is expected to take place within the next two months and is expected to take less than 24 hours.
The mystery began on the morning of Friday, August 28, 1981 when police in Ripon, North Yorks., received a call from a well-spoken man who refused to give his name for “national security” reasons but told them: “Near Scawton Moor House you will find a decomposed body.”
Officers found the woman’s remains between two small conifer plantations, to the side of an unclassified road leading from Sutton Bank to the villages of Scawton and Rievaulx.
The woman was 5ft 2in, aged between 35 and 40, and may have been a mother. She appeared to have short dark hair and there was evidence that she had broken her right ankle years before.
A Home Office pathologist estimated the body had been there for up to two years.
Police made numerous appeals in an attempt to identify the woman, and enlisted scientists and a television company’s make-up department to create a wax reconstruction of her head.
The tactic helped officers trace 164 missing women, but no-one could name the Nude in the Nettles. She was buried at Malton in 1983.
The move has been welcomed by retired Detective Chief Superintendent Strickland Carter, who led the original investigation.
He said: “I think it is a great idea because DNA analysis was not available when we did our investigation. We would have done it on the spot if we could.
“It was a mysterious case and it would be a great comfort if they could establish who it was.”
Source: The Telegraph
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