Hi-tech help for North Yorkshire Police in battle with cross-border crime gangs

POLICE in North Yorkshire have unveiled new technology to stop the county being targeted by gangs of organised “cross-border” criminals from neighbouring areas.
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Half of all burglaries and a third of total crimes in North Yorkshire are committed by travelling criminals from outside the county, with residents in rural areas fearing they are particularly vulnerable.

Crime commissioner Julia Mulligan has now announced a £250,000 investment to help officers track and trace more of the vehicles driven by criminals crossing over county borders.

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The new software will improve North Yorkshire Police’s ability to analyse footage from its dozens of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras and link up with other forces to check on suspected offenders.

Mrs Mulligan said the county had a “particular issue” with cross border crime and that gangs would often steal expensive farming equipment to order from isolated areas.

She said: “If you go to somewhere like Stokesley, I had a surgery there this week and I would say 90 per cent of people there were talking about this cross border crime issue. It is a very significant problem around burglaries but also around rural crime as well. To effectively tackle cross border criminality and serious, organised crime gangs, we need to be able to more efficiently identify those people.

“This upgraded system will enhance our capability, and North Yorkshire residents will be safer and better protected as a result.

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“Communities should feel safer knowing the police are watching criminals at all times, and we should ultimately have less victims of cross border serious and organised crime”.

ANPR cameras work by scanning vehicle registration numbers and checking them against information stored in databases to identify vehicles connected to criminality.

North Yorkshire Police expanded its ANPR capacity last year by buying eight fixed cameras and five moveable cameras, as well as adding in-car cameras to a further seven vehicles.

In 2011 the force’s ANPR team seized 380 vehicles for insurance and licence offences, arrested 123 people on suspicion of various offences including theft, drug offences and driving offences.

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The force says the new software package, which costs £254,000, will “improve analysis of ANPR data and keep up to date with other forces who have or will be the same system to allow for joint working”.

It is hoped suspected offenders will be identified and caught more quickly by making better use of the data generated by the ANPR cameras. The technology will also help tackle “home grown” criminals and bring down the high levels of road accidents in the county.

North Yorkshire is surrounded by seven other police force areas, all with higher crime rates. Large numbers of travelling criminals are thought to be coming into the county from other parts of Yorkshire as well as areas such as Teeside and Lancashire.

Acting Assistant Chief Constable Ken McIntosh said the county suffered “disproportionately” from travelling criminals but that the new investment would “ensure our communities can be safe and feel safe”.

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Barney Kay, regional director of the National Farmers’ Union, said: “The issue of criminals travelling into rural areas to target farms, often stealing machinery to order, is one that is frequently raised by our members.

“Farmwatch operations frequently highlight the extent to which thieves cross and re-cross county boundaries, using this as a tactic to disguise their activities, so anything that can provide more intelligence on their movements has to be welcomed.”