Specialist squad takes on gangs of thieves targeting luxury cars

The officers have been hand-picked to carry out a concerted crackdown on car thieves who have been travelling across the north of England to prey on households in the Harrogate district.

Senior officers from North Yorkshire Police have also drawn up a rogues gallery of the most wanted offenders as part of the operation to combat so-called two-in-one burglaries, where gangs break into properties and steal keys to take top-of-the-range vehicles off the owners’ driveways or from the streets outside.

The campaign, which has been intensified since the start of the year, has already begun to pay dividends after a dramatic reduction in the number of burglaries in the Harrogate district.

Police commanders revealed there has been a 52 per cent decrease in year-on-year burglary figures across the Harrogate district, with 81 offences committed between April 1 and the end of last week.

There were 171 burglaries throughout the district during the same period in 2011.

The Harrogate Safer Neighbourhood Commander, Superintendant Barry Smith, instigated the crackdown when he was posted to the district in September last year after he employed similar tactics during the last seven years while serving in Richmond, Selby and Skipton.

Supt Smith said: “Harrogate is an affluent area, and as a result it has been targeted by criminals.

“We have decided to take a proactive approach and we have seen some significant success in reducing the number of offences. But there is no room for complacency, and there is no such thing as an acceptable level of crime.

“We will be making sure that we share intelligence with colleagues in North Yorkshire as well as other police forces to ensure that offenders are not able to turn their attention to other areas.”

The team of thief-takers has acted on intelligence provided by the public who have spotted suspects acting suspiciously in the Harrogate district while staking out homes for break-ins.

The officers have travelled as far afield as Burnley, Doncaster and Darlington to the homes of the suspected criminals to quiz them about their motives for being in the area after tracing them through the number plates of vehicles they had driven to North Yorkshire.

There have been a series of successful prosecutions which Supt Smith heralded as key to driving down the number of offences, although he stressed other criminals are now being placed on the rogues gallery.

Lee Harpin, 27, of Gascoigne Crescent, Harrogate, was sentenced at York Crown Court earlier this month to a year-long jail term after pleading guilty to committing a two-in-one burglary in Knaresborough.

He broke the security chain on the back door of a property on Bond End on March 10 and took the keys to a Toyota Avensis.

He crashed nearby on Knaresborough Road and ran into nearby fields. His scent was picked up by a police dog and he was arrested at the entrance to Harrogate Golf Club, covered in mud and missing a shoe.

Another offender, Adam May, aged 24, who was responsible for a burglary at St John Fisher School in December, was jailed for three years earlier this month.

The Yorkshire Post revealed in June that organised gangs of hardened criminals are being blamed for a worrying rise in home burglaries to target luxury cars.

Vehicles including Audis, BMWs and Mercedes have been taken and then either stripped for parts or shipped abroad to international crime syndicates as far away as Africa.

In North Yorkshire, the number of two-in-one burglaries increased by a third in the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2011.