With over 12,000 powered and non-powered tools stolen so far this year, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) would like to raise awareness around the importance of home and business security.
Tools can be extremely valuable possessions and when stolen, can greatly impact on both businesses and London residents alike.
Police regularly recover stolen tools, however identifying their owners is a huge problem.
Thames Valley Police ( #OpAppleton) recently highlighted this problem following the recovery of over 2,000 power tools. The Met’s MetTrace project team linked up with them in an attempt to trace some of the owners.
Unfortunately, none of the tools had been security marked by either SmartWater, a forensic property-marking product, or other products. Had they been so, the process of identifying the owners would have been quick and simple.
Thames Valley Police did however manage to identify some owners through months of hard work by checking serial numbers and crime reports.
