Of­fences of mo­tor ve­hi­cle rob­beries and lar­ce­ny have been re­duced by 27 per cent for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to May 31 — with on­ly 300 in­ci­dents be­ing record­ed this year as op­posed to 411 be­ing re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2018.

Af­ter the drug trade, lar­ce­ny and rob­bery mo­tor ve­hi­cles is the next largest or­gan­ised crime in this coun­try. New ve­hi­cle own­ers are al­so the high­est risk of falling vic­tim.

Ac­cord­ing to Sgt Christo­pher Swamber of the Stolen Ve­hi­cles Squad, speak­ing at a week­ly press brief­ing of the Po­lice Ser­vice on Tues­day, "Re­ports of lar­ce­ny mo­tor ve­hi­cle of­fences for the pe­ri­od un­der re­view de­creased by 31 per cent as there were 168 record­ed re­ports in 2019, com­pared to 244 re­ports in 2017. For re­ports of mo­tor ve­hi­cle rob­beries, there was al­so a de­crease of 20 per cent, as there were 132 such re­ports record­ed in 2019, com­pared to 167 com­mit­ted in 2018."

The North­ern, South­ern and Cen­tral Di­vi­sions record­ed the high­est num­ber of rob­bery/lar­ce­ny of mo­tor ve­hi­cles for this year, with 72, 68 and 51 re­ports re­spec­tive­ly.

Be­cause of this, Swamber said "Mo­tor ve­hi­cle own­ers are, there­fore, strong­ly ad­vised to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion when in these ar­eas."

He said 43 peo­ple were ei­ther ar­rest­ed or charged for mo­tor ve­hi­cle lar­ce­ny/rob­beries so far this year.

Swamber said ac­cord­ing to trends, new ve­hi­cle own­ers are most at risk.

"With­in the past few months we have not­ed an in­creas­ing trend of crim­i­nals tar­get­ing brand new mo­tor ve­hi­cles, es­pe­cial­ly the Hyundai Tuc­son, the Nis­san X-Trail and the Kia Sportage. Many of these ve­hi­cles are bought with a war­ran­ty, which pre­vents their own­ers from in­stalling an­ti-theft or GPS de­vices in the ve­hi­cle," he said.

He, there­fore, ad­vis­es that new car own­ers to re­turn to the com­pa­ny and in­form them of their de­sire to in­stall an­ti-theft de­vices to se­cure their ve­hi­cle dur­ing the war­ran­ty pe­ri­od.

For those with the GPS track­ing sys­tem, he ad­vis­es that they "vis­it the com­pa­ny at least once per month and have their tech­ni­cians ac­ti­vate the GPS track­ing sys­tem, to ver­i­fy that the de­vice and their sys­tem are both in work­ing or­der. In­creas­ing­ly, we are find­ing that com­pa­nies are un­able to ac­ti­vate the track­ing sys­tems in a time­ly man­ner when a ve­hi­cle is stolen, giv­ing crim­i­nals suf­fi­cient time to find and dis­con­nect the GPS de­vices."

It is not un­com­mon to hear of peo­ple be­ing robbed or tak­en ad­van­tage of when at­tempt­ing to buy a ve­hi­cle they saw ad­ver­tis­ing on­line or in the news­pa­pers.

For this he ad­vised: "As far as pos­si­ble, do not walk with large sums of cash to pur­chase ve­hi­cles which are ad­ver­tised on­line or in the news­pa­per clas­si­fied ads. Al­ways seek a se­cure method of pay­ment through a bank or meet with the sell­er of the ve­hi­cle at a safe lo­ca­tion. Po­ten­tial buy­ers run the risk of be­ing robbed of the cash when they ar­rive at the agreed meet­ing point."

BOX

Of the 300 ve­hi­cles re­port­ed stolen (lar­ce­ny/rob­bery) up un­til May 31 2019, 60 were Nis­sans which rep­re­sents 20 per cent of the to­tal fig­ure.

The pre­ferred choic­es were:

TI­I­DA (14)

B14 (14)

AD Wag­on (10)

B13 (5)

B-15 (5)

Wingroad (4)

X-Trail (4)

Almera (3)

Navar­ra (1)