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Over £1 Million of Items Recovered by the Warwickshire Rural Crime Team

Following work with rural communities and partner agencies, Warwickshire Police recognised the need for a dedicated team to focus on the offenders of rural crime, recovering stolen items and building relationships within the rural areas of the county.

The Warwickshire Rural Crime Team was formed in October 2019 and was initially set up with 1 Sergeant, 1 Coordinator and 4 Police Constables, led by an Inspector.  The team now has an additional 2 Police Constables taking the team to 6 PC’s, plus a supporting team of Specials.

As well as specialist training for the team, the officers also have 4×4 vehicles, 2 x drones and other specific equipment to help them tackle crime in remote rural areas and identify stolen items and offenders.

To date the team have recovered over £1 Million worth of stolen caravans, trailers, vehicles and plant machinery.  This is an overall team effort with assistance from other departments within our force, our partners at NavCIS, Datatag, TER (Equipment Register), NCC CRiS, Tracker UK, NFU and many more, neighbouring police forces who we work closely with on a regular basis and most importantly the public.  Sincere thanks go to the many members of the public who contact the police and the Rural Crime Team to advise on suspicious incidents, concerns or information on something that they have seen so that it can be followed up.

In addition to the proactiveness of the team, Warwickshire Rural Watch (www.warwickshireruralwatch.co.uk) provides alerts to incidents, good news stories and crime prevention advice.  Target hardening of properties, especially rural locations and using devices such as trackers, beam alarms, CCTV, marking property, etc, can make a huge difference and in many instances assists the team on recovering stolen vehicles and property.

The team continue to run operations, patrols and investigations tackling the offenders who commit rural crime in our county and supporting our rural communities and look forward to build on the success of our team.