Ducati stolen

That'll T-Cut out....

 

Heh , so thats criminal damage , theft and handling stolen goods.
Wonder which one of them's going to take the rap?

Steve

 

Only if they didn't have a warrant.

 

Christ's crackpipe, what a shower of demersal motherfucking slugfuckers.
Sue them blind & go public.

That is just fucking unfuckingbelievably fucked beyond any kind of
fucked up fucking fuckery.

Wankers.

 

Certainly reaches a new height of incompetence.

 

South Wales Police
"We break in - so you don't have to."

 

bah - you're no fun.

 

Does it though?

The way I see it, the Police acted on a tip-off that there
were a/some stolen bike(s) being held in a lock-up. The Police
raided the premises, carted the goods away and then set about
seeing what belonged to who.

Unfortunately it seems that it was either bad intelligence,
or Steve's lock-up was unfortunately included in the raid
even thought *we* know the bike was his. Obviously the Police
didn't know this at the time, or whether the bike was stolen.

It's a minor inconvenience that his bike is down at the plod
garage waiting for it to all be sorted out, but if his bike
*had* been nicked and they'd just recovered it, I think the
tune of the song would be slightly different.

Speed was obviously of the essence in this case; maybe they
thought the bike(s) would disappear quickly and needed to
raid it asap. They may not have been able/wanted to call the
landlord in case he was in on it or tipped off whoever was.
Maybe they didn't have someone sitting outside on stakeout
to read the bike reg numbers to check if they'd been stolen,
so they *had* to go into the units to check them.

So the Police got one wrong? It happens. I'd rather they get
the odd raid wrong and still do them to catch bike thieves
than they go all H&S and stop doing them without phoning
everyone and tipping off the crims before raiding the place.

....at least nobody got shot in the head this time too.

 

The incompetence started *after* the raid. (aside from the fact that
there a whole number of reasons why, if they'd done a little pre-raid
investigation, they'd know there were no stolen bikes in there.....)

Where it all goes badly wrong is that it has taken the best part of a
week to work out that 'oh, I keep it in a lockup on xxx road in yyy'
tied in with the address they'd lifted the bike from.

The address of my lockup / garage was given to the officer who I
originally spoke to.

 

Terrorist.

 

Indeed. That is where I see things going wrong. They really should have
known immediately that they had raided that address (or at the very
least one near by, assuming they hit Steve's lockup in error), and been
able to tie them together.

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Why? What evidence do the police have to link a bike registered
in Steve's name to a lock-up owned by someone else? A crystal ball?

As I said above, the only way they would have been able to tie
the two together would have been to ask the landlord to provide
information about who rented which lock-ups (which may have
tipped someone off) or to wait around in the hope that they
would spot a bike or person going in or out and then find out
from there. That would mean a 24/7 stakeout with no guarantee
that anyone would turn up.

It seems that they acted correctly to me; the fallout after the
event may have not been administered correctly but that is
probably more down to different departments within the same
police force not having the full facts. After all, until they
had spoken to Steve, the Police didn't know if his bike was
nicked anyway.

To me it seems that people are getting a bit jumped up about
nothing in particular, when things would have been much different
if Steve's bike had been stolen and the police didn't bother
raiding an address /just in case/.

 

Hi phoning up and telling them that it had been nicked *from the lockup
address*?

I have no problem with them acting on intelligence, but there does seem
to be a break in communication that those that might reasonably be
expected to be fielding calls from the public on 'stolen' vehicles (the
front desk?) appeared to be unaware of where said vehicles may have been
'stolen' from.



--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

I don't think it's that simple. They were obviously acting
on some kind of intelligence and it was probably deemed that
speed was the key to breaking this one. Maybe they thought
they'd catch a bike ringing group at work, or wanted to get
in before the bike was broken up and it was lost forever?
Surely that's better than waiting around thinking about it?

Again, it might not have been ideal to contact the landlord
and do enquiries about the rental of the units as this may
have tipped someone off and it's not unheard of for people
to sub-let units, false names used, no records, etc.

It seems that the Police did what I would have wanted them
to do had my bike been stolen and they had a possible location
for it - raid the place!

Given that it's (a) christmas and (b) the police, the above
does not surprise me, but remember that there will be
investigations going on in the background that they will need
to check the owner(s) of any vehicles found and possibly
verify the vehicle identities before the two can be reunited.

Yes, it's a pain in the arse that there's a delay involved
but I'd rather wait a week and see my bike again knowing that
someone took longer than they should to verify the details,
than to let it slip away either in the first place or after
a place was raided and a bike recovered, only to give it back
to the original thief.

I don't think you've been hard done by at all. The timing is
unfortunate but at least you'll get your bike back and an
apology as well.

 

I thought they phoned Steve and told them they'd recovered it in a
raid?

There wasn't a call saying it was stolen and they probably only put
two and two together when they realised that the address Steve told
them he kept it at was the one they'd raided.

This is why I said earlier that I'd go for a bit of point scoring at
their expense but I doubt if there'd be enough money in it to make it
worth winding them up by taking legal action against them. I hate to
think how often Steve or Katie would be late for work when the local
plod realised he'd probably screwed someones career by taking the piss
but you can be sure it'd happen.

 

The raid was carried out on Monday 21st.

I got a note through my door reference the bike on Tuesday 22nd.

I called them on Tuesday 22nd, to be told my bike had been stolen - but
they had recovered it.

They then asked when I last saw it - at which point I explained that I
kept it at the address they'd raided.

At this point, the officer who spoke to me didn't make the connection
between the address they'd raided and the address I'd given them!

As they knew it was my bike and were happy they'd contacted the owner,
why did it take until last night for someone to look at the 2 addresses
and think: 'doh! - the owner told us he kept it at the address
raided'.....

That's the complete incompetence of the case.

I'd still love to know how, out of a row of 12 garages, they were able
to pin-point mine for a raid, though - it seems they got some gossip
from the busy-body who was watching me photograph the damage this
morning.... and acted without conducting any investigation at all.

Also, wouldn't it have been slightly more public friendly to call the
owner of the lockups whilst parked outside them, get the name of the
person renting the unit and call them, before going in heavy handed?

 

They left a note and told me this when I called them back.

The fact that it took the best part of a week, plus a move through the
ranks from PC through to Inspector, for them to match the two addresses
from the log file is what is really annoying me now.

You're probably right - but I wonder if the local press would be
interested?

 

On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:13:47 +0100, Catman

[...]

Unless he phoned the exact same unit responsible for the raid, that would
require a completely centralised database accessible to all plod.

Which is a Bad Idea (TM).

(well, either that, or it would require superhuman knowledge from all
plod phone operators )

Personally, I prefer a police force with not enough of internal
communication
(because stuff will be sorted out sooner or later) to an enforcement
industry
completely ridden by a unified computer network.

That's why a national ID database is not a good idea, IMHO. (But we're all
going to get them sooner or later anyhow)

 

AIUI he then phoned them. ICBW though.

I'd tend to agree.


--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Because the officer speaking to you was more than likely going through a
list of recovered bikes, notifying their owners that they'd been
recovered and collecting info. He wouldn't necessarily have the list of
premises they'd been recovered from.

The fact that the connection was made, albeit a couple of days later, is
perhaps testament to the fact that somebody, somewhere, *was* thinking.

What, and (if it was being used to store stolen vehicles) tip them off
that there might be raids on other units being used for the same
purpose?