UK EXPENSIVE PLASMA SCREENS AND COMPUTERS BEING STOLEN Hornsey and Crouch End Journal

08 March 2006

EXPENSIVE plasma televisions and laptop computers are being stolen from the front rooms of homes in a spiralling crimewave across the west of Haringey, figures reveal.

One of the borough's top police chiefs has warned people to shield their pricey technology from view, or risk violent night-time smash-and-grab raids.

More than a third of all burglaries in Muswell Hill, Crouch End, Stroud Green and Highgate in the last month have specifically targeted laptops and plasma TVs.

Homes in those areas are proving particularly easy pickings for criminals, warned Chief Inspector Nick Simpson.

He said: "It is as brazen as picking up a traffic cone or a flowerpot and throwing it through a window, which has happened on occasion. We are not talking about professional, well-planned burglaries here."

Chief inspector Simpson said his belief, based on intelligence, was that offenders often walked residential streets during the day to see what is in people's front rooms, then return in the evenings or late at night to carry out the burglary.

Between February 1 and March 2, some 14 laptops and 25 plasma screens were stolen in 30 burglaries, which accounted for 37.5 per cent of all burglaries in those areas.

Chief Inspector Simpson said: "Witnesses have described people jumping in through the front window and back out with a plasma screen, then on to the pillion seat of a moped waiting outside.

"That happened a couple of weeks ago in Highgate. Police were chasing a moped driver with a person holding a plasma screen on the back, but lost them when they turned down a narrow alleyway."

He added: "Because of the racket they make, they are in and out. With that method it is difficult for police to prevent because up until a few seconds before the offence, they haven't got anything on them that suggests they are going to commit a crime."

Safer Neighbourhood teams have upped their evening and night-time patrols in an effort to deter the burglars, but Chief Inspector Simpson advised people to draw their front room curtains to prevent people seeing in, improve the security of front windows, mark possessions with your post code and remove items that could be used as missiles from front gardens.