Stolen to order for Africa

Stolen to order Hundreds of Peugeots cars are being stolen across London to feed a booming trade in spares for the African market. Surely the police are on the case?

JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW, whose 505 went in June, is not convinced THE 505 estate, with three rows of seats, was never a fashion item and certainly not a luxury or classic model, but is still much favoured by middle-class mothers on school runs throughout the Home Counties.

Sadly for its admirers, Peugeot ended production 10 years ago to make way for its new people carrier, but some of

us still manage to find them on the secondhand market. For a family with four children, 505 enthusiasts will tell you, they're better than a people carrier. You don't need a loft conversion - a coffin on the roof - to carry the luggage, or have to find 20,000.

The problem is that these cars do go missing and, strangely, in increasing numbers as their supply diminishes.

The reason is that ever since production stopped, there has been a growing demand for spares in Africa. The 505s, known as "the African taxis", enjoy immortality as long as there are spares and improvisation to keep them on the road. Zambia is the main outlet but if you look at any television news bulletin from Sierra Leone or Zimbabwe, you will see these veterans of suburban commuter runs pelting along dusty potholed streets - sometimes chauffering a passenger, sometimes overcrowded with the local militia.

I know all this because at 3.25am on 1 June our Peugeot 505 was stolen from outside our front door in Camberwell. On their first attempt three weeks earlier the thieves had broken into the car but had been disturbed by a neighbour. We told the police, installed a steering lock but were still twitchy enough to leap out of bed whenever we heard mysterious noises.

It was my wife who sounded the alert during the actual theft, but I was too slow, fumbling with the front-door keys as the car disappeared into the night, never to be seen again - except, curiously enough, by a police speed camera.

Four days later, we bought for 2,000 an almost identical car to replace the stolen one - but it was only another three weeks before, in broad daylight, an attempt was made to steal the second Peugeot. The thief broke the door lock and started stripping the dashboard but was unable to deal with the immobiliser.

I then discovered that more than 355 Peugeot 505s have been stolen in London so far this year, compared with 144 in the whole of 1999. Mine is one of twenty five 505s stolen from the borough of Lambeth alone. Only one has been found - not as a result of police diligence, but because it ran out of petrol on a motorway.

Amazingly, the 505 makes the top 10 parade of stolen vehicles in London, along with another rare oldie, the Nissan Cabstar, and with the more familiar Fords, Vauxhalls and VWs.

Behind these nocturnal raids on the family vehicle is a vast trade in unauthorised parts sent to Africa to keep their ageing taxi fleet on the road. Containers of used components stolen to order and destined for Nigeria and Ghana have been intercepted at ports throughout Britain.

David Sotiris, a crime analyst for 30 years, noticed the trend in car thefts and started to look into it. He has now produced a detailed computer printout and circulated it to all London police departments.

He estimates the thieves themselves make about 100 on each car, or half that if they operate in pairs. It would not take a major push to make it no longer worth their while. On the other hand insurance companies, which pay out 2,000 to 3,000 a time, might find it worth their while talking to Mr Sotiris.

"If they were Mercedes and they were going to Florida you'd be trampled in the rush but no one wants to go to Nigeria in search of little bits of Peugeots," he says. "I heard of one man who saw his Range Rover, with English number plates, being driven by the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

The police told him he could go and get it himself."

According to Sotiris, there are two or three loosely knit teams on the 505 scam. Often they use tow trucks and don't even bother to start the car operating. They have been known quite brazenly to take three or four cars in one night from a half-square-mile area.

Once they steal the car they may dump it in a disused garage, leaving someone else to pick it up, breaking the link with the original theft.

They are not major criminals; most are not very bright, unemployed drifters.

"It is very frustrating," says Mr Sotiris, who knows of one police officer who has lost five 505s of his own. "It's not the sort of crime which attracts a custodial sentence. If there was more money involved it might be easier to deal with. If there was less, they probably wouldn't bother."

Amazingly there were 14 pictures of my stolen Peugeot and its driver taken by a speed camera but police were unable to use this information to catch the thief. They even issued me, the rightful owner, with a speeding ticket - but eventually thought better of it and abandoned any idea of a prosecution.

A week after the theft of my car, Dagenham police rang to say that it had been found, stripped of its engine, wheels, glass, carpets, radio, lights and all removable parts, in a scrapyard in Essex, and was recognisable only from its chassis number. Later I learned that two men had been arrested for the theft of the car but released because of lack of evidence.

SO, do the police really take theft of a motor vehicle seriously? I wonder.

Their response to the first theft was as slow as the thieves were quick. It took them an hour to find the house, telephoning for directions. What hope of finding a car?

During conversations with the police I explained the Africa theory, and suggested someone should keep an eye on Channel ports, but they were reluctant to put out an alert because they said this sort of thing happened all the time.

Victims of crime are often exasperated by police inertia. It's partly the secrecy, partly the excuse they always give, that they don't have the resources. If only the police could harness the enthusiasm of the victims, they would be tougher on crime and the causes of crime. Why don't they use tracking devices or CCTV? Car owners might well be happy to contribute to such schemes.

"It's not that simple," they say as if you're incurably naive, "it's a manpower problem". But it may be that simple, however, and it may be an attitude problem.

When Pc Sheehan of Lavender Hill police station was informed of the attempted theft he even suggested it was our fault. "Ultimately the responsibility for your property lies with you," he said. "Once you've reported the stolen vehicle, that's all the police can do." He didn't have time to leave his desk and he didn't even offer to take fingerprints.

Where is the insatiable curiosity of Sherlock Holmes? Or even of The Bill, one of whose characters said the other night: "I've opened a can of worms here and I'm going to follow it through."

Even more baffling was the response of WPc Hickling, of Streatham police, who, when told our second car had been broken into but nothing had gone, said: "As far as we are concerned, if nothing has been taken and the car isn't damaged, no crime has been committed."

I am informed by more senior police sources that it is essential for them to keep their operation lowkey, otherwise the culprits would stop stealing Peugeots and turn their attention to something else. If this is how the police approach crime, there is something immoral about it.

It is tantamount to encouraging theft. As you will understand, I'm all in favour of stopping the theft of Peugeots. Why don't they go and steal something else? Indeed.

Additional reporting by Philip Nettleton

TOP 10 THEFTS

Cars not recovered between 1 January and and 31 August 2000

Make / Model Total

1 Ford Escort 979

2 Ford Transit 916

3 Ford Fiesta 756

4 Vauxhall Astra 497

5 Volkswagen Golf 445

6 Austin/Rover Metro 359

7 Vauxhall Cavalier 358

8 Peugeot 505 355

9 Ford Sierra 332

10 Nissan Cabstar 307

Total 5,304

VICTIMS OF THE PEUGEOT TRADE

Robin Waterer, left, company director:

"Our car was stolen in January. We were in the process of selling it to a salvage company and had transferred ownership documents to our new car. The old one, which we had for 11 or 12 years, had always gone well but needed a lot of work. The MoT had run out and it had three electrical faults which probably made it unroadworthy. Although we were in the process of getting rid of it, it's not very nice having something taken. If they had asked us for it, we would probably have given them the keys."

Bruce Stokes, clergyman:

"Our D-reg 1986 automatic 505 was stolen in December 1998. We had just bought a new engine but they were not to know that. It happened in daylight between 2pm and 3.30pm in Havil Street, just 200 yards from Southwark Town Hall where I was chairing a housing arbitration panel.

It had an alarm, which was switched off, and an immobiliser which didn't work. They must have known what they were doing because they made off with it very briskly."

Adrian Hall, solicitor:

"We lost ours at Easter time in broad daylight, parked in Salcot Road, near Northcote Road street market. Several people saw two young lads, one of whom opened up the locked car without any trouble. One of the witnesses followed the car in a van but lost track of it. Now we've got another 505 which rattles a lot but it's the only car for us. For most of the summer holidays we were driving around with six children. They took all the car's papers so they know all our details. When I wake up every morning I'm surprised to see the car is still there."

Stephen Scott, set designer:

"Ours was taken in May, in daylight outside our house in Wandsworth. It was an X-reg, 18 years old, which we had for five years. They tried to steal it a month earlier but we were amazed anyone would want such an old banger. The police were not interested but my gripe is with the insurance company who, after the attempted theft, refused to pay up but raised the premium on our new car, despite the fact it is a Citroen and we moved to Malvern.

The loss of the car was not a big problem although we would probably have kept it for a year.

But we felt shafted by everyone."

Copyright 2000
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