Soft Targets

S2 E1: Car crime in Britain today is big business and the crooks are picking on “soft targets” as the recession hits home. Cars, Cops & Criminals goes out on the road with Angus Nairn of the Central Motorway Policing Group as he chases those who will steal the loads from the back of lories and lorry drivers who illegally tamper with their tachographs to work more hours. More than 40,000 caravans go missing every year and a large percentage go out of the country never to be seen again. We follow expert insurance investigator Dave Smith, as he checks the county steam fair for stolen caravans with some devastating results for the innocent owners. Because Bob and Margaret Johnson had a tracker device fitted to their second “home” they got their caravan back, luckily for them as in it was their much-loved dog Jackie. With the Olympics coming up in 2012 the Met’s stolen vehicle squad look at the increasing problem of plant theft. In London’s east end building sites reformed crook “Pete” shows us how easy it is to steal equipment worth thousands of pounds. While elsewhere in the country farmers are losing millions of pounds worth of equipment stolen, which is stolen to order and taken to Eastern Europe. In years gone by, ram raiders were seen as a major problem in city centers but measures taken to stop those have now resulted in gangs of two-wheeled criminals who attack jewellery shops, who take only 39 seconds to make off with over one million pounds worth of jewels.