What do the burglary team do all day? Sometimes we fight foes on top of waterfalls. We do other stuff too though…
What do the burglary team at Local CID do all day?
The obvious answer would be that we look for clues with our magnifying glasses, try on deerstalkers and place pins on large wall maps.
To be fair, this is pretty accurate.
Without magnifying glasses, we’d miss the vital piece in the jigsaw that cracks the case.
No deerstalkers and nobody would know we’re from CID, no randomly-placed map pins and our office wouldn’t look professional.
Whilst it is pretty accurate, the role does involve more than just fighting nemesis at the top of the Reichenbach Falls*.
For the burglary team, one of the first things we do in the morning is to check overnight crime to see what’s been happening on our beats.
Any house burglaries that we find, we look into to see what areas they’re in, how they’ve been committed etc and then will give the victim a call for an update.
We’ll chase up any forensic results, check out the intelligence using our clever computers and follow up any oustanding enquiries with witnesses and CCTV.
One of the most important things we’ll then do is to liaise with a magpie.
This isn’t the result of something funny being slipped into our pipes, rather the ‘magie’ officer is a specialist who links in with the pawn shops and helps track down stolen property.
Aside snooping around the second hand market, the magpie officer also makes enquiries with the National Mobile Property Register – the ‘PNC of property’ – to check that outstanding items are correctly listed.
If there’s sufficient evidence, we speak to the Local Priority Team and Offender Managers who can lend assistance with arrests, we then conduct property searches to help locate evidence before interview suspects at the station.
If all goes to plan following an arrest then hopefully we’re able to charge and remand (keep in the cells) our suspect and dispatch him or her to court the following day.
Whilst this is a flavour of the sort of work the burglary team does, it’s important to point out that by following some simple crime prevention advice, many of the burglaries that come to us could be avoided.
You’re likely to pick up some handy tips on our Safer Homes website on how to keep your home secure, equally important though is to register all of your goods on the property register.
Doing so is quick, easy and will cost you no pennies whatsoever.
Simply log onto www.immobilise.com and start listing your valuables – doing so makes it much, much easier for us to identify them so please make it the next website you visit!
* Realistically this only happens once or twice a month.
DC Richard Stanley 