Police Intelligence and Theft of Vehicles for Export: Recent U.K. Experience (From Understanding and Preventing Car Theft -- Crime Prevention Studies, Volume 17, P 173-192, 2004, Michael G. Maxfield and Ronald V. Clarke, eds.)

• NCJ Number: 208056
• Author(s): Rick Brown; Ronald V. Clarke
• Date Published: 2004
• Length: 20 pages
• Sale Source: Criminal Justice Press/Willow Tree Press
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: For other chapters, see NCJ-208049-55 and NCJ-208057.

Annotation

This paper assesses Great Britain's policing of vehicle theft for export, with attention to the sufficiency of crime analysis and police intelligence.

Abstract

In July 2000, Great Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) launched its Organized Vehicle Crime Program to help reduce vehicle crime. One of the projects initiated under this program was Project Verdun, which addressed the export of stolen vehicles. The project focused on targeting criminal enterprises involved in exporting stolen vehicles, researching and disrupting markets to the most popular destinations for stolen vehicles, and improving working practices with the shipping and freight-forwarding industries. At the time the project began, there had been little analysis of the nature and extent of exported stolen vehicles; one of the project's objectives was to improve this knowledge. After providing an overview of Britain's National Intelligence Model -- which profiles how police intelligence is collected, analyzed, and acted upon -- this paper assesses the strategic and tactical intelligence developed by Project Verdun. The difficulties of collecting and using intelligence as the basis for police operations is illustrated in Operation Salvage, a local police operation that targeted a salvage yard known to be receiving stolen vehicles. Strategic issues in this operation have wider implications for the use of police intelligence to counter the export of stolen vehicles. This paper concludes that the export of stolen vehicles remains a problem for British law enforcement from both a strategic and tactical perspective. In tactical intelligence there are problems in gaining a sufficiently detailed understanding of the activities of a criminal enterprise, and when sufficient intelligence is developed there are no guarantees that action will be taken. From a strategic perspective, there is little scanning being undertaken to identify emerging trends, and the current structures for sharing intelligence may be limiting the amount of information received by the National Criminal Intelligence Service. 1 figure, 9 notes, and 20 references