Haulage Long Haul

From a recent Road Haulage Associations ecurity seminar, exclusively covered by Professional Security magazine.

START stopping truck loss
 
Brian Wareham, Director of Operations of the Crimestoppers Trust, launched START – Stop Truckcrime And Ring Today – at the Road Haulage Association security seminar. START follows the SMART campaign (Stop Motorcrime And Ring Today) launched in 1997. It has resulted in nearly 40,000 calls from members of the public; nearly 3,000 people have been arrested; and more than £5m of vehicles and goods have been recovered. The RHA and the charity behind the 0800 555 111 confidential crime-reporting line have launched this campaign to concentrate on commercial vehicle crime, aiming to give ‘ownership’ to RHA members. Promotional cards (pictured) are available from RHA regional offices. For more details, please use our reader reply service:
 
Rather than throwing its corporate hands in the air about thefts of its products from lorries, a household name works with the National Stolen Lorry Desk and backs it financially – and gets a return, a security manager told the Road Haulage Association security seminar.
 
Roger Driscoll, a former Metropolitan Police man, now a security manager with confectionery firm Cadbury Trebor Bassett, said: ‘We are all vulnerable to attacks on our vehicles, regardless of how big or small our companies. Organised gangs of thieves will target lorries.’ This year, the firm has suffered the loss of four trailers. For some comparison, the company has 87 trailers plus 200 ‘spot hire’ for taking stock from factories to stores, and for moving ingredients – a total of 90,000 movements a year, carrying 100,000 tonnes. Ingredients alone are moved by 12 liquid and powder tankers, making 5,000 movements a year. CTB is in fact a merger of chocolate and sugar businesses; Roger Driscoll spoke of how integration of the operation – so that chocolate and sugar products were in the same stores – resulted in a shortening of despatch routes, and in turn reduced risks, by reducing the amount of overnight parking of lorries.
 
Crime examples
 
However the firm has suffered crime – such as: 
– theft in January of pallets from Dublin docks, on the way to the company’s Dublin factory from a chilled store at Minworth in the West Midlands; 
– In March, 26 pallets were stolen from a haulier’s yard; 
– In July, a trailer with 26 pallets of Flakes was stolen from a Liverpool yard. There CCTV recorded three men forcing a palisade fence to get in, and ramming the gates to get out. 
Roger Driscoll said: ‘It is plain to see that all of these crimes had been committed by organised gangs. I believe the only way to combat organised crime is to be organised. Every one of us should have a risk management policy which includes security and regularly hold meetings with staff, and especially your drivers, to establish where your risks lie. Take time to think through your operation.’ And think crime prevention. At Cadbury Trebor Bassett, he said that if overnight parking is required the company does its best so that the trailer and vehicle are lodged in the haulier’s own yard – already audited and approved by Roger Driscoll.
 
Agency drivers
 
As for agency drivers, chocolate has two seasons – before Christmas and Easter – and hence CTB has to use agencies for those peak times. A haulier is obliged to have insurance cover, and a haulier must have CTB’s authority to employ approved sub-contractors. – subject to the same conditions of carriage as the haulier, and as security-audited as the core haulier. An agency must forward photographs and licences of staff being used, the day before the work. As another speaker on the day put it, how can a haulier put his goods in the hands of someone he doesn’t know a thing about’
 
Agency drivers
 
Roger Driscoll closed by explaining why CTB is among the sponsors of the National Stolen Lorry Desk; the police have never been under so much pressure to meet priorities, he said. Does the industry, he asked, sit back and complain about the cost of insurance, failed deliveries and lack of customer confidence, or does it assist the police’ He went on to praise the lorry desk for a two-way exchange of information, which allows security managers to make better risk assessments. And it works: four people have been arrested in connection with the Dublin theft and are awaiting trial. In the Liverpool case, two men were arrested. In both those cases, the loads were recovered in full. Iain McKinnon who runs the lorry desk at Essex Police headquarters liaised between the police officers on the case and Roger Driscoll, simplifying the taking of statements and the identifying of loads.
 
Two afternoon speakers at the Road Haulage Association security seminar – a head of security and a police officer – gave proof that lorry thieves are not having it all their own way, thanks to good use of intelligence. As at other times during the seminar, however, speakers stressed how professional and organised the criminals are – no less than the legitimate companies they are preying on. First, the police.
 
Stop whingeing! DC Paddy Kerr of Greater Manchester Police told hauliers. In a well-received talk about how police are acting against lorry criminals, he admitted that police cannot chase every crime. But he called on the haulage industry to do its bit. DC Kerr praised Crimestoppers: ‘It’s a great way of getting that intelligence in’ – such as a suspicion about a warehouseman. He began by dividing crimes into three – low-level, such as Salford children slashing sides of trailers, and stealing whatever is inside. Middle-level is cross-border crime, and top level is international. Lorry thieves, he stressed (like other speakers) are in business – they do their groundwork, they have ‘board meetings’ – albeit in cafes – and only steal what they can sell on. While Manchester has many motorways, it has only one services stop in that region – which does not have much crime. Partly because truckers have legal requirements to stop, they are sometimes halting in what DC Kerr called ‘less salubrious areas’ and are becoming victims of crime at unsecured lay-bys. More truck stops would solve that problem, he suggested.
 
Cost of surveillance
 
Given that mobile surveillance of suspects costs the police £2,500 to £3,000 a day, and perhaps 200 people are carrying out thefts and slashings of lorries on Merseyside – and those people are being switched around by their bosses – ‘you work out the maths,’ said DC Kerr. It makes more sense to concentrate on hotspots and crime trends, and go after the Mr Bigs, the the one or two handlers of those 200 thieves. DC Kerr painted a picture of police having to justify spending on surveillance and operations to superiors, as in a commercial set-up. For example, he spoke of having to weigh up the costs of carrying out forensic tests – DNA is costly, and fingerprints may be difficult to isolate on a mucky lorry. DC Kerr took the audience through Operation Aerosol. An informant gave details of a team making a lot of money from overnight thefts – such as £60,000 of jackets, worth £16,000 to the thieves, resulting from one night’s work. ‘I am in the wrong job, clearly,’ DC Kerr said, sardonically. The team of three were using a lorry and travelling as far afield as Cumbria and Wiltshire – using their vehicle as a ‘mobile shop’. Greater Manchester Police gave 14 days for a police team to carry out an operation against this gang.
 
Tribulations and trials
 
The operation did not go smoothly. One of the gang got six months in prison for stealing a lorry in Staffordshire (another example, incidentally, of how far such criminals roam). A second man was in custody, leaving one – who gained two new mates. The police began surveillance. On the second night the gang’s lorry went to Lockerbie – the police force helicopter was ready – only for a Scottish police constable to stop the gang and HM Customs to take the lorry to Glasgow. On the last day of the surveillance – if it came to nothing, the police were ‘back on the beat’ – the suspects in a van drove to Warrington, slashing 25 wagons there. They break into a lorry and drive it away. The criminals stop in a lay-by and switch goods from the lorry to their van. Presuming that the suspects will return to their base – on a Salford Council caravan site – the covert operation rings frantically for regular police resources to help in making arrests.
 
Real-life video
 
At this point, DC Kerr showed the delegates a video of the climax of the operation, taken in the dark from the police helicopter. Two men fled into a relative’s caravan – one jumping into a bed fully-clothed, including boots. When cautioned by police, he said he always slept like that. The other man hid under the caravan, and had an equally lame excuse. As for their punishment, one man got two years in prison, and served 14 months.
 
Part of the solution’
 
DC Kerr finished by admitting that the police does not have the resources to investigate every crime in a sustained manner. The haulage industry must take responsibility for its business, he said – is industry prepared to put its money where its mouth is, to be part of the solution’ He gave another case of theft of goods from a warehouse – goods that would have been written off in a yearly stock-take. Senior staff at the warehouse were putting double loads onto a lorry, which was delivered to a handler who distributed those stolen goods. This case was unknown to the supermarket and the cereal manufacturer whose product was being siphoned off.
 
Half of incidents reported to the National Stolen Lorry Load Desk happen at depots. That was among the findings by Frank Heinrich-Jones, of consultants PLC. Frank, a member of the RHA security committee and JAGOLT, has a transport insurance background. There is a terrorist threat to the transport industry, he said, namely in ‘haz chem’ (hazardous chemicals) and ‘drity bombs’. However he only touched on that subject, going instead into the problems of organised crime – meaning that legitimate companies were competing against their own products sold by criminals; a ‘fell off the back of a lorry culture’ that does not take such crime seriously; and low detection and awareness of haulage theft. ‘Lorry drivers can do an awful lot more and so could haulage companies. Drivers can lock their cab doors.’ He reeled off recent thefts: 
– a security guard kidnapped and £64,000 of boots stolen; 
– thanks to a bogus police officer, £350,000 of Nike goods were stolen from Felixstowe. 
– Compaq, IKEA and Gillette are among the many names hit by theft of goods during transit.
Methods include cutting fences and attacks on security officers; ram raids; and deception, such as bogus drivers arriving a couple of hours before the genuine man. UK drivers are being attacked in Europe, just as foreign drivers may be vulnerable to scams such as ‘the London shuffle.’
 
One phone number, Europe-wide
 
Frank Heinrich-Jones mentioned Eurowatch, which is offering a discount to RHA members. The service is a single telephone number that a subscriber can ring from any country. Vehicle tracking information can be forwarded to police using any GPS-based system on the market, and can work with a ‘phone call of your location from a mobile, Eurowatch say. The service works through a website and companies across Europe with police accreditation. Eurowatch report that UK drivers abroad face language difficulties if they ring police numbers in an emergency; nor can police numbers be dialled across borders.
 
Horror stories from the floor of the RHA conference included Bernard Howard’s of hauliers PC Howard of Peterborough. He said he has lost £25,000 loads out of Birmingham, and the West Midlands Police have not shown any interest: ‘When you contact the police whether it’s a £20,000 load or a £100,000 load, all you get is a crime number.’ In another case of the theft of a truck from a test station at Featherstone; the haulier called police only to face an argument as to whether the place was inside the Staffordshire or West Midlands police force area; the owner in frustration rang West Midlands force headquarters who accepted the case was theirs. Meanwhile a £60,000 truck was gone.
 
Think tracking
 
Tony Hill, Hampshire Police Traffic Intelligence Officer, said he sympathised with such victims. He added: ‘It’s the movers and shakers in our organisations who we need to get motivated; we feel the frustration those in the industry feel.’ Next speaker from the floor, Geoff Cloke of Kent Police, said it would help tremendously if hauliers would think of putting tracking devices into their vehicles; if hauliers are spending £60,000 on a lorry, why not spend a little extra, on security measures’ (The fleet of Carlisle-based haulier Eddie Stobart is fitted with the Navtrak device.)
 
Lead from US’
 
James Wilkes, of MRC Investigations, suggested taking a lead from the United States, where for years ‘cargo crime’ has been considered a matter of national security, and addressed as such by government. From the chair, Quentin Willson asked John Abbott of the NCIS if UK government is taking transport crime seriously enough, and if it understands the enormity of it. Mr Abbott suspected that the Government did not understand the enormity of it, because recording and reporting of such crime is not as slick as it should be; hence analysis is not as sharp as it should be. Returning to his earlier theme of organised crime, Mr Abbott added: ‘I have spent the last four years urging central Government to make some performance indicator for tackling serious and organised crime.’ But it has not happened. Answering a question from Tom Craig of consultants Amarlis about data protection, Mr Abbott pointed out that organised criminals do not have to abide by the rules; the good guys do. He added: ‘I have been pointing out for some time that issues around access to data and data retention are curcial to effective law enforcement. Gone are the days when you have human witnesses. Invariably the witness is the data from a computer, a telephone record, billing data, and so on.’ Mr Abbott endorsed Tom Craig’s view that the data protection balance is not right between protection of the subject and the need to investigate crime.
 
Write to your MP
 
Next speaker, back from last year’s seminar, was George Pothecary, the Deputy Chief Constable of Dorset Police, and former chair of JAGOLT In full the Joint Home Office / Metropolitan Police Action Group on Lorry Theft, its members include the RHA, police, manufacturers, insurers, and HM Customs. He began by urging delegates to lobby their MP, and spoke of police operating within limited budgets, and with targets being driven through – and poerformance linked to budget. Under the Police Reform Act, a reworking of funding from the Home Office could mean the Dorset force having millions less in its budget, Mr Pothecary said. JAGOLT meets two or three times a year, working on subjects such as secure parking, agency drivers (selection and qualifications), and roof markings. He described the National Stolen Lorry Load Desk, shortly to move back to the Met from Essex Police headquarters, as critical to gathering of information.
 
Praise for desk
 
DC Iain McKinnon, another speaker from last year, is (with a civilian colleague) the National Stolen Lorry Load Desk. The two have their salaries paid for by the haulage and insurance industries. He began by giving some history (a seconded Essex officer set up the desk at the Met in the early 1990s) and some basics: ‘A lorry is a warehouse on wheels. This warehouse can carry loads ranging from a few hundred pounds to several million pounds.’ No doubt, he said, only a fraction of slashing of lorry curtains is reported. Such cases can be costly: in one case at a truck stop, 11 pallets of hand-held computers were taken, worth £330,000. Such crimes might be the result of a criminal convoy; a ‘scout’ car seeks suitable vehicles for an ‘adapted rigid’ (a van with a door fitted into its side) to pull alongside, slash the lorry side, and unload from one to the other. Other crimes on the increase include ’round the corner gangs’, also known as ‘the London shuffle’ – expanding however into the Home Counties. A lorry driver goes to his point of delivery, where he is met by someone with a clipboard who tells the driver to go around the corner. There the load is put into a van … never to be seen again. In a more ingenious twist, the lorry driver is told there is no room in the depot, but there is a transport cafe around the corner. The lorry and load are left in the care of someone while the driver is taken for a fry-up. During the meal, the ‘minder’ gets a call on his mobile, steps outside, and he, lorry and load are never seen again. Ian McKinnon, in charge of the desk since 1997, urged hauliers to report crime attempts too. Reported cases have reached 3,500 a year. He is notified by police, loss adjusters, cargo surveyors, investigators and shippers, hauliers and manufacturers, including photographs of stolen property, which has proved invaluable in recovery of some loads. Also of use are images of thieves captured on camera – if the CCTV users have bothered to put in a new and clean tape, which they haven’t usually, Iain McKinnon said. He urged hauliers to notify the desk as early as possible: ‘It does mean we can provide the best service for you.’ Also, hauliers should alert the desk to suspicious cars, for example, hanging around depots at 4am; registration numbers could prove a vital piece in the jigsaw of a later investigation. Thes desk also wants details of suspiciously cheap goods being offered in pubs and clubs.
 
Applause for desk
 
Skimming of containers is another problem. A possible scenario could be that a container leaves South America, loaded with wine, for Felixstowe. part of the load is found to be missing, but the seal is not detached. The temptation is not to report the theft. Prompt offering and use of intelligence – including via the 0800 555 111 Crimestoppers line – can lead to recovery of loads. Iain McKinnon gave examples: electrical tools stolen from Northamptonshire, and the trailer found in Essex. A call to Crimestoppers revealed that some was cutting plugs off power tools – because, it turned out, those stolen goods were destined for the Continent, and the thief was fitting UK plugs. Five were arrested and half the load recovered. The lorry desk works with other law enforcement agencies on bootlegging and illegal immigrant smuggling. Iain McKinnon does not have the time to take your calls over the ‘phone: e-mail or fax him. While he said it was not his job to tell hauliers what to do about crime, he gave some advice: 
– drivers must not talk about their loads with anybody; 
– if drivers are provided with security measures, they should use them; 
– lorries should park in well-lit areas, not unsecured car parks; 
– if someone asks a driver to leave a load elsewhere, ask questions, and contacy your traffic office; 
– if a haulier uses sub-contractors, do not rely on the agency to check ID and insurance 
– horror of horrors, consider double manning.
The audience gave Iain McKinnon a round of applause for his work on the desk.
 
Why let the proverbial ‘white van man’ into parking areas for heavy goods vehicles’ That was a question posed by DCI David Ryan of the Metropolitan Police, a speaker at the RHA seminar on safe truck parking. The ACPO Secured Car Parks scheme works on a self-assessment questionnaire, covering the likes of lighting, vehicle and pedestrian access, signage, and management practices. The award is only for one year, to encourage maintenance of systems. Denying ‘white van man’ access to lorry-only parking at motorway service stations, maybe by CCTV with automatic number plate recognition, could reduce slashings of vehicle sides and transferring of loads swiftly into ‘white vans’. Like other police speakers on the day, DCI Ryan said that the fight against crime has to be a team effort, not by the police alone.
For details of the ACPO scheme, please use our reader reply service:
 
You can download ‘Steer Clear’ crime prevention leaflets from the Home Office
 
Fighting Back was the upbeat title of the second Road Haulage Association security seminar. But from the first speaker onwards it was plain that not only are hauliers still suffering from thefts, they remain unhappy with the response from law enforcers.
 
Until lorry crime becomes a KPI [key performance indicator] for police, and a ‘sexy’ subject, Bob Russett, RHA chairman, doubted that things would improve. He picked up on the venue, the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham: ‘In West Midlands there has been a noticeable lack of support for lorry-related crime investigation, despite nearly a third of the country’s lorry crime taking place here in the West Midlands.’ Earlier Mr Russett said: ‘Fighting back is exactly what we must do. Lorry crimes are not victimles. Our customers suffer and so in turn we suffer when we lose those customers.’ Turning to insurance, he said: ‘Our premiums are based on our claims experience. Whatever they pay out this year will be the basis of our premiums for next year and the year after. It’s us the hauliers that will pay in the end.’ His conclusion: ‘We do need to get lorry crime moved up the political agenda.’
 
Quentin Willson
 
Event chairman, the broadcaster Quentin Willson, began with an apology that said it all about haulage crime’s low profile. Willson recalled that at last year’s seminar he had said he would make a documentary about lorry crime, only for TV companies – ‘only interested in gardening, DIY and dating shows and reality programmes’ – to turn it down. (Ironically, the seminar was on the day, September 18, that the BBC devoted to crime.) Willson seconded Mr Russett’s call for the subject to be seen as more ‘sexy’. He called for the issue to be packaged so that it grabbed people’s attention, while he admitted that organised crime and the extreme violence involved in some lorry crime were attention-grabbing. In underwhelmed tones, Willson read out Home Office Minister John Denham’s letter to Roger King, RHA Chief Executive, apologising (as the Government did last year) for not attending the seminar. Nor did anyone else from Government appear – which again spoke volumes about how low a priority haulage crime has among the politicians. Another reason for Mr Denham not attending may well be that he knew he would be on the receiving end of stick. John Abbott was instead.
 
Organised crime links
 
Mr Abbott, Director General of the National Criminal Intelligence Service, admitted that the volley from the RHA chairman was ‘justified’. The NCIS boss opened by talking about organised crime generally: ‘Organised crime is big business’ – estimated at £50 billion a year in the UK. Such crime is market-driven, and flexible, and has effective networks (this stress on how business-like organised crime is, and how it mirrors reputable business, were themes of the day). Organised crime knows how to play the criminal justice system; it has an international range; and it uses the latest technology. It evades tax through money laundering; and can corrupt people, to gain influence and access. In the UK its priorities are drugs, traffic in people, cigarettes, counterfeit goods and a range of frauds. As for the seminar, organised crime, like legitimate business, has to transport its goods, whether into the UK or within, to the marketplace: ‘There is no doubt that the frieght industry is used and abused by organised crime.’ Mr Abbott spoke of criminal freight companies, and corrupt employees – ‘whether drivers, despatchers, or loaders’. Some haulage criminals are opportunists. Reported lorry load thefts are on th increase, he said, adding that reports are the tip of the iceberg. Such crime is increasingly sophisticated, targetting higher value loads, either thanks to corruption of staff or careless talk. He gave an example of theft of aluminium ingots last year, which suggested front companies were handling such stolen goods – allowing money laundering, and providing funds for more crime. High-value goods targetted include computer chips, and mobile phones; also targets are clothing, and cigarettes, which are easy to sell. Criminals, like legal retailers, respond to demand; hence thefts of alcohol and toys go up in the run-up to Christmas. ‘We do have a number of identified hotspots which we all ought to keep in mind: West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Thames Valley, Greater Manchester and Essex account for more than half of all reported incidents in the last year. So what are we doing about it” Mr Abbott asked. ‘As with all crime, law enforcement activity alone is not the answer.’ He admitted that law enforcers can do better – in targetting hotspots, for instance, and recording of crimes (in particular, recording the value of goods stolen). ‘if you can understand how the criminals operate, you can prevent and detect. We need to be sharper in investigating the crime. Too often it takes too long for police officers to get to the scene. We can make greater use of forensic evidence.’ DNA, finger-prints, even pieces of clothing might be left after the slashing of a trader side, which might be of use to forensics. Mr Abbott also asked if drivers who were victims of crime were being interviewed quickly enough, and if CCTV was being installed into hotspot areas. Were police checking tachographs to see where criminals stopped with stolen (and later recovered) vehicles’ ‘It seems to me, and I may be treading on other people’s toes, that the creation of a national strategy for tackling lorry load theft is urgently required.’ While the haulage industry has done much regarding security, Mr Abbott asked if vetting of staff was as thorough as it could be – ‘not only at recruitment, but periodically; people do change their habits, their lifestyles’. Do hauliers use tracking systems enough’ Is security of the vehicle of the highest order’ These were questions that Mr Abbott put to the hauliers, and his concluding point was a call for the holy grail: for the law enforcers and hauliers to be as well organised as organised crime is.

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