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JANICE TURNER

It’s frightening when police give up on crime

Residents in leafy suburbs and red wall estates are in despair as burglary and car theft are all but ignored by local forces

The Times

A friend’s family bicycles were stolen from their shed, seven of them, some expensively customised. She phoned the police who just gave her a crime reference number. Later, when she found one bike abandoned with a snapped chain, she called again. Surely they could take fingerprints? Maybe, said an officer, but still no one came.

This is only the latest crime on her street. First, her camper van was set alight and destroyed. Near neighbours have been burgled and several times my friend has come home to find a garden table pushed against a wall where an intruder had tried to enter upstairs. A delivery of heavy shower doors was nicked from her doorstep before she could bring it inside. She daren’t go away without