CITS ORGANISED POLICE TRAINING BRINGS CONTINUED SUCCESS!
The National Construction and Agricultural Theft Team’s (NCATT’s) largest operation to date, involved targeting an Organised Criminal Group (OCG) who were operating in the West Mercia area. The OCG were stealing construction machines, cloning them, then selling them on.
The intelligence led operation secured five warrants for addresses across West Mercia and beyond. West Mercia police alone deployed 120 officers on the day of executing the warrants.
The operation resulted in the seizure of over 60 machines. As an additional success to this operation, to date, a further 40 stolen and sold machines are now being traced. Two of these sales were traced to Scotland.
Highlighting the on-going success of CITS organised police training, two officers who had attended the police training events held in Scotland earlier in the year, were contacted at the beginning of September to help with the recoveries. The officers responded immediately, and found a Twin drum roller and a Thwaites dumper. Both were items found on false identities.
One of the Scottish officers involved in the recoveries and who had attended the police training event in Inverurie, commented on the success:
“The police training event myself and my team attended at Thainstone, Inverurie, was absolutely brilliant, and getting to put it into practice was genuinely very rewarding, and highlights the power of the events.”
The specialist CITS police training events are held in conjunction with NCATT. These are rolled out nationally throughout the year, aiming to help officers gain the knowledge to spot rogue machinery movements, and to identify and recover stolen equipment. Without these events, the officers involved in a recent police operation would not have had the right knowledge, or contacts, to be involved in the recovery of multiple stolen machines.
The training events are also supported by the Construction Equipment Association (CEA), and the official CESAR Scheme.
