Police forces tackle foreign national criminals on our roads

A national campaign to target foreign national criminals travelling the country’s roads has been launched by police.

Police officers from Romania, Lithuania and Poland have arrived in the UK to join the campaign, which is aimed at catching travelling criminals who use the roads to avoid detection and move around the country.

Some travelling gangs are thought to be involved in volume offences such as shoplifting, fraud, metal theft and theft from motor vehicles – for instance of catalytic converters. These criminal gangs move around the country and are not linked to individual or established communities.

Chief Superintendent Martin Evans, head of the Central Motorway Police Group, said:

“We want to reassure the public that we are working with our European colleagues to tackle these gangs and use the best intelligence and skills we have to detect, prevent and convict those responsible for crime around the country.

“While shoplifting may not appear as one of the more serious offences, it has a very damaging effect on businesses. Some individuals we have previously stopped had significant criminal convictions.”

It is estimated there are, at any one time, between 15,000 and 30,000 foreign registered vehicles present on the UK’s roads.

Under Operation Trivium, which runs from July 15th to 19th, police will be stopping vehicles of interest and using officers who have travelled from Romania, Lithuania and Poland to carry out real-time checks to establish if the occupants are wanted by police in their home countries. Officers across the country will be using various means of intelligence, including automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) *, to stop and disrupt criminal operations.

The foreign police officers will be based at a central call centre to allow UK officers to contact them and carry out almost instant checks on drivers and occupants.
Some of the officers will also travel out with UK police and carry out roadside checks themselves.

National lead for roads policing, Chief Constable Suzette Davenport, said:

“Many of these criminals are organised and use the road network to travel from area to area in an attempt to avoid detection. Their activity has a damaging impact on communities and businesses that are targeted. We want to prevent the public from the misery they cause and build on the intelligence we already have. These criminal gangs must use our roads to carry out their illegal activity, so by targeting them in this way we are aiming to develop a robust system to tackle the issue in the future.”

Koen Ricour, president of TISPOL, the European Traffic Police Network, identified the need for swift exchange of information between participating law enforcement agencies to maximise the impact of this kind of cross-border road policing operation.

"Good planning, effective co-ordination and clear lines of communication between us all will ensure an efficient information flow during this kind of operation. The result is better targeting of criminal gangs and better protection for European citizens," he said.

Road Safety Minister Stephen Hammond said:

“This is an excellent example of the Department for Transport working together with the police to help keep our roads safe. These gangs pose a real risk to other road users as their vehicles are likely to be uninsured, have no MOT, and the drivers may not even hold a valid driving licence.”

ENDS

A Foreign National is defined as ‘A person, who was born outside the jurisdiction of the UK, is a citizen of a foreign country and has not become a naturalised UK citizen under UK law’.

Officers:
Romania – 4 officers
Lithuania – 2 officers
Poland – 2 officers

Picture: National policing lead for roads policing, Chief Constable Suzette Davenport.

Twitter hash-tag for the operation is #roadcrime

*Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR):
ANPR uses cameras, which can be mobile, portable or placed at fixed locations, to capture details of vehicle registration marks or from number plates, along with the time and location of the vehicle. This information can then be instantly checked against a range of databases of vehicles which are of interest to police. These include the Police National Computer, and those supplied by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Motor Insurers’ Bureau.
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