Today, 14th January 2015, a community officer came to our front door to tell us there had been two burglaries on Salcott Road last night between Webbs and Northcote. I went to check if there was anything about it on NappyValley and pulled up this post from last year, same week a year ago. I didn't get a chance to ask any questions the burglaries.

Sorry to hear about the drug dealers.
I telephoned the police last week with my crime reference number to find out if the perpetrators of our burglary in December were the ones that were recently caught by the MET.
After the incident at our house there were finger prints taken from the sash window that they broke into, and also DNA evidence was found by forensics,
Sadly, the burglars who have been caught are not the ones who burgled us.
The police say there are always several groups working in any one area at any one time. So please everyone remain vigilant.
I am considering putting up CCTV cameras.

I live on Salcott Road and also run a business called Luv Handles the bike boutique in the area. OUr business premise is directly opposite the cemetery and there is in fact quite a bit of activity that passes through there after work hours. To shed light, I have seen activity to 'what appears' to be x1 first class drug dealing in my block of flats.
There was an increase of activity since Summer last year '2013 and I reported it to the police and a couple months later performed an investigation labelled "Operation Hawk" in the block. If you have any questions about this, I do suggest contacting them directly. The 'addicts' I have judged to be seen in this area all continue to go to this block in particular.
I suggest being aware that this type of crime is everywhere and to remember to not leave any opportunities visible and vulnerable to temptation in the event of.

So sorry to hear of these crimes :(
Mercedes

I hope the police will notify all those burgled if these arrests lead to convictions. The police officers who took forensic evidence and finger prints from our house after we were burgled through a sash window said we would be notified. Does anyone know how long it takes from arrest to conviction? Fingers crossed those arrested really are the perpetrators of the crimes.

Looks like there have been some arrests!

From police twitter feed...

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2 men charged with burglary, attempted burglary & TWoC yesterday - accused of breaking in via sash windows 'between the commons' #Battersea

https://twitter.com/MPSWandsworth/status/434618416562200576

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Obviously I am concerned about this issue having already posted in this thread about an attempted burglary at my house, and I can only imagine how awful it must be for those who have been affected. However, I think we need to be careful here: young people are allowed to their ride bikes in their local area without being labelled as heroin addicts or suspected of scouting out the area in order to commit crime! Sadly this may be true of some, but it's not fair to make such a sweeping generalisation.

It's probably worth joining the Streetlife (local) forum too, to share information

https://www.streetlife.com/

Chris from Sash smart (07841216060, chris@sashsmart.co.uk) was able to come in today and managed to drill additional holes to my old windows in order to move all my locks 10 cm lower so that is is much harder for burglars to even open the windows.
I have used Sash smart in the past to change all my sash windows on the 1st and 2nd floor and I will highly recommend them. They are really good guys, reliable, polite and clean. They are also very reasonable in terms of cost.

I hope this will do the trick and deter any burglars to come in.

[quote="Writerlady"]Another good way to slow them down is to just decide not to use the ground floor sash windows. When we had the room decorated we had the windows painted closed. It would be hard to cut their way through layers of gloss paint, locks and shutters. As many ground floors of Victorian houses are open plan ventilation can be provided from the other end of the house.[/quote]

Just to say the a burgler easily made his way through this in our house- sash windows were painted over and had locks and they just levered it all open. They even levered off our window box that was nailed into the window sill outside. We now keep our shutters shut at all times unless we are sitting in the room and have a monitored alarm plus locks that only allow the window to be opened about 10 cms (even though they are still painted shut) as opposed to ones that are actually inside the frame...

I went to the Eagle a week ago. There was no talk as such. The Northcote road neighbourhoods team was there (3 of them) and someone from SDS. They were answering people's questions invidually or in small groups and giving out leaflets on how to protect homes and mark belongings. There wasn't really anything new that had not been mentioned already on this thread about the techniques used, the way to protect the front sash windows etc. Unless other people/small groups covered other points.

With all these burglaries involving ham, we can rule out the suspects who are Jewish or Muslim...

Joking aside, we also had a definite attempted break in to the flat above us a few months back with access gained via the neighbours side return and then on to the roof terrace.

The police arrived promptly and the burglar managed to avoid being seen or caught. As a result no one believed there was a burglar, despite us hearing him trying to get in to the flat whilst our neighbour was away and in spite of the fact that our neighbours side return suddenly having a massive crack. We were impressed by the speed of response, unimpressed by their faffing around at the wrong address halfway up the street and unimpressed by the follow up.

Perhaps we should seek their response to these complaints in this thread.

Not sure this will make a difference but at the very least we can let our representatives know how frustrated we are with the lack of attention this recent spate of burglaries is getting from the police:

Complete this Listening to Wandsworth survey from Wandsworth’s Conservative councillors "to give your views on important local matters such as crime and anti-social behavior…as we believe it is essential Wandsworth remains committed to providing excellent local services at the best possible value to Council Tax payers".

Here's the survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Listeningtowandsworth

C'mon Nappy Valley, let 'em know what you think!

If you want the police to react quickly you might suggest that you think someone has a gun.

[quote="Beckyfitz"]Our car (BMW X5) was stolen on Thursday evening right outside our house, no keys or breaking, the police think there is device which is bringing used to steal X5's, there have been a lot stolen around sw11 recently. It's gone, in a container on its way to china. So unfair but if you have a new X5 I strongly recommend a steering wheel lock, it's deters them due to speed of stealing the car.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the burglaries that happened the same evening.?[/quote]

The same thing happened to our X5 just before Christmas. New BMWs and, I believe, Audis and VWs are at risk to "spoofing" of the electronic key fob: basically they have a device that imitates the key, and they can drive off in the car. Most of these cars have had their security systems upgraded to reduce the incidence of this, but BMW (at least) don't advertise this fact voluntarily -- you need to press them about it, and then they offer to upgrade it for free.

We were lucky to some extent in that we were able to track down and recover our car in the next 24 hours (the BMWs can be tracked remotely from your smartphone), and it had been parked up and locked by the thieves outside a home in East London! Cost us hundreds in minor damage to the interior (when they realised that it would be difficult to disable the GPS and tracker, they tore up the wiring a bit) and recovery, but we got BMW to upgrade the security system and also limit access to the main keys (ie much harder to fake new keys). Still, next car is unlikely to be a BMW for precisely this reason.

Police were perfectly pleasant but utterly hopeless for a number of reasons -- couldn't find the car, couldn't investigate, couldn't really care; they seemed truly clueless -- they blamed drug addicts at first....drug addicts with highly sophisticated electronic equipment for circumventing car security systems... ;)

So I would advise anyone with a new BMW, Audi or VW to ensure that their security software is up to date. Not proof against theft, but reduces the possibility dramatically.

What with the phone hacking, plebgate and the response to the riots, can anyone remember a time when the public opinion of the Police was so low? I can't personally, not even in the miner's strike or poll tax riots.