31
Mar
2015
By Calvin at 12:05 GMT, 9 years ago
In the Irish Herald online today there’s a story about the Garda’s decade-old anti-burglary operation known as ‘Operation Fiacla’. The news article shows Detective Inspector Noel Browne sitting at a table strewn with hundreds of items of jewellery, watches and other small valuables purported to be worth many hundreds of thousands of Euros. The most recent haul of 1,000 items of jewellery was recovered in February and is believed to have been stolen during the course of burglaries over the previous few months.
What I find interesting about the story is DI Browne’s remark to the Herald reporter when discussing the latest recovery. He says "There is approximately 1,000 items of jewellery [here], some of which we have identified as being stolen in burglaries in recent months......in Kildare, Dun Laoghaire, and elsewhere"
The key part of what DI Browne says is ‘some of which we have identified’. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’re only able to hand back 20% of the haul to the rightful owners, a problem faced by all police forces throughout the world.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, without knowing where the recovered property has come from, which they strongly suspect has been stolen, they could, in some cases, be unable to charge the person caught in possession of the property.
I’ve no doubt that DI Browne and his team will be doing their level best to match the jewellery recovered with crimes committed and may even have put the stuff on public display, hoping that a victim might identify it, so how can we help our police do their job more effectively?
Your best course of action is to imagine that you’ve been the victim of a burglary and you’ve lost an item of jewellery – how are you going to convince the police who find it that it is yours?
‘Detail’ is the name of the game. Here’s a few tips, but if you want to know more please go to the property marking section on this website at the link below.
- Photographs Take detailed, close-up photographs of the different faces of the item taken without the use of a flash in good lighting, preferably in daylight. Use a high pixel setting on a digital camera if you have one, although mobile phone cameras can take pretty good pictures these days.
Photograph items one at a time. In other words, don’t present the police (or your insurers) with a photo of a dozen items, because you’ll lose out on the detail.
Take images of both sides of the item, the top and bottom and of any markings, such as an inscription, a hallmark or area of damage.
Photograph the item against a non-reflective surface; a dark plain background for a silver object and a lighter plain background for gold, although you should experiment with both until you get the best image
- Description For some items of jewellery, such as an engagement ring, you may have a valuation certificate, which will provide information about the ring’s metal and its stones. Keep this in your safe and, if you intend to create an inventory of all your valuable property, including jewellery, antiques and works of art, you can use the information on the certificate to complete an Object ID Description Form, which you can download from this page (click just above the Object ID Table)
- When to do it As soon as you can! If you’re following my suggestion that ‘2015 is the year you secured your home’ then this is one of the tasks you must fit into the schedule.
Remember!
- Do all you reasonably can do to prevent a crime against you
- Have measures in place (e.g. burglar alarm) to warn your neighbours and the police that a crime is being committed against you
- Be in a position to help the police investigate your crime – where the detailed description of stolen property can be vital
Property Identification - Marking, Tagging and Tracking http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/security-inside-the-home/484/property-identification--marking-tagging-and-tracking/
