The Great British Theft Epidemic

[jaybee]

I think we are in a bad place at the moment with Theft in the UK.

- "Porch Pirates" are becoming a real problem now with parcel theft from houses. It seems to have become the norm now since COVID lockdowns for couriers to just dump parcels anywhere in the vicinity of the property and so long as they took a picture, it's "delivered".

- We have record levels of shoplifting and people not scanning things at self checkouts, or simply walking out with stuff. Our local Tesco express has issues where the staff are told to let them go and not confront them. It happens daily.

- We have a problem in our area with a gang of people that go around at night trying car doors down all the streets, after quick wins where the cars have been left unlocked. These are caught on Doorbell cams all the time.

- We have keyless car theft at an all time high. In the video series below, they look at why Range Rovers are now becoming impossible to insure. Quotes of £25000 to insure them. Jaguar Land Rover have recalled loads to "fix" the security issue. Land Rover values are predicted to tank. At one point supposedly 90 a week were being stolen in London.

All of these have one thing in common. Very little is being done to combat it. The Police near me have been given names and addresses of individuals involved in local thefts and nothing seems to be done. Police are given the locations of some of the cars being stolen and they do not have the resource to pay sites the visit. Years of police cuts seem to have damaged the UK now because thieves have the confidence to commit these crimes without much fear into any consequences.

Where do we go from here?

 

[jaybee]

Well you can fight back but don't be surprised if it's you the police arrest.

Yeah.
So we live with it. We live with people taking advantage without punishment. We lock our things up and hope for the best. We keep paying high insurance premiums ever rising.
It feels like it's unsustainable. It feels like we are ripe for some riots into the future or vigilantism to deal with these people. There are neighbours near me already talking about staying up one night to "meet" some of these thieves at 3am trying their car door. I suspect they are carrying, and it could end badly.

 

[jaybee]

In our small town we used to have a reasonably large police station with at least 6 (that I can remember) permanent police officers patrolling, a couple of police panda cars, as well as a small magistrates court. This was shut in the late 90's and replaced by a smaller outpost type building that wasn't permanently manned. The last couple of years this has now closed and become an estate agent. Our nearest police station is now over 8 miles away and this one is stretched beyond breaking point. However, every year without fail the council tax bill comes through with increased costs to pay for policing, despite the fact the size of the town has pretty much doubled and we now have no active police for miles around. It's infuriating to say the least.

They're all sat in an office patrolling social media.

 

[jaybee]

Stop buying **** online and go out more.

Shoplifting is largely gang crime now. Not for people starving in the street. Needs serious policing yes.

Don't buy a keyless car.

Sorted.

Ah a serious response to the problem. Silly me, buying stuff online.
Keyless cars....don't get much choice on a lot of them now. My nearly 10 year old Clio has keyless entry.

 

[jaybee]

Do you know any police?
I know an inspector, he says they spend basically no time on that stuff, their numbers are only just starting to recover to where they were, let alone to have moved to the level they should have based on the population change
He says the main reason you see so few police is they are basically filling in all the gaps from the other services, so mental health, problem getting an ambulance to someone etc.

I don't know any anymore. I can imagine yes. You mention starting to recover... in my mind, Police levels are probably in the single figures percents of what they should be.

 

[jaybee]

Are car manufacturers deliberately making cars easy to nick so they sell more ?
A Rolls Royce at nearly half a million quid should be impossible to steal unless you have the key. It's pathetic.

Maybe all cars should be fitted with unremovable trackers as standard.

The problem with trackers, is they typically need a power source no? So they can only be so small to accommodate a small battery? I'm not familiar with them really. Manufacturers could definitely build things into the loom or deep into the car if they truly wanted to address the issue but:

a) Criminals will eventually find it and it will become known that manufacturer places the tracker in location X on car Y etc.
b) They can cut power to the car and strip for parts if it requires power
c) They can place the car in a shipping container where I assume signal is not great and just continue to ship abroad to order

A custom tracker install (bespoke) will always be better, and additional hidden start procedures (bespoke).
Proximity based keyless entry is somewhat flawed. They should contain at least accelerometers in the keys to know they are on the move and about to be potentially used for real. All cars should feature a method to do overnight or long unattended disablement of keyless entry. Again, my Clio does this. I dead lock it over night every night, which means the keyfob has to be pressed physically to unlock the car. Still vulnerable to attack if the trigger signal is captured and replayed but makes it much harder than simple amplification of keyless signal.

 

[jaybee]

Yeah the current issue with the Land Rovers (not sure what year) is to do with the car projecting a signal constantly looking for the key, unless I misunderstood. The fix they implement is to stop it doing this after X seconds. But then....how does keyless work at all actually. Meh. Dunno.

 

[jaybee]

I don’t even think there’s a solution to stop a car been taken. A criminal will find a way to exploit something no matter how secure it is.

Maybe people are bored. Everything people did been young when it was good has been taken away.

It maybe is deeper than just been a criminal wanting to make money.

Why do you write "been" like that when it should be "being"?

 

[jaybee]

I av corrected my typo mistaks 4 ya.

They aren't typos though. You selectively use slang speak on just that word (which looks stupid), or you don't understand the use of said word and its tenses (which looks stupid). Now I also look stupid for calling it out though so there's that...damn.