‘You've got to act,' says Tory MP who took on London car thieves
Gareth Davies was leaving his house in north London shortly after 10am last Saturday when the man in the black tracksuit walked by.
'He was dressed all in black, with a baseball cap, kind of hunched over,' the Tory MP said. 'I thought nothing of it.' But when he looked back, Davies, 41, noticed some unusual behaviour. The man crossed the road, walked past one row of cars, then crossed back and walked past another.
'I thought, 'That's a bit odd',' Davies said. 'So I decided to watch him and, sure enough, a couple of seconds later he's trying the doors of all the cars. He's pressing windows, trying boot handles. There were other people around — this was in broad daylight.'
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Davies called the police, providing a description of the man and his location. As Davies was talking, the man succeeded in breaking into a Mini. 'He's crawling all around the car,' Davies said, 'not looking to steal it but going through the glove compartments, side pockets, into the boot of the car.'
The man filled a bag with items from the car then walked further down the road, trying more car doors. It was at this point that Davies decided to follow him, walking ten metres behind while remaining on the phone to the police.
'Anybody that spends any time in London these days will tell you they've seen something happen, whether it's jumping barriers at Tube stations, trying car doors, stealing phones out of people's hands,' he said. 'And I'm just getting fed up of it. At some point you can't just rely on hoping that the police will catch them. You've got to say something. You've got to act. I felt there was a possibility he could get away, that he may hide. Because I also didn't know how long the police would take to arrive.'
Davies thought that sticking close to the man would increase the likelihood of a prosecution. 'There's over 60,000 thefts from vehicles every year and something like a 1 per cent detection rate. It's incredibly frustrating to think that people think they can act like that in broad daylight. They clearly think they can get away with it.'
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At one point the man turned around and clocked that he was being followed. 'He starts walking back towards me, which is unusual,' Davies said. 'The police said [to] get out of there very quickly. So I just crossed the road and pretended to walk away.'
Davies subsequently saw the man attempting to hide behind a bus stop. 'Just at that point, the police car came, literally in front of me,' Davies said. 'I waved and pointed directly at the guy. They got out of the car, pinned him against the wall, took the bag off him.'
Davies subsequently bumped into the Mini owner and explained that her car had been broken into. 'She felt a little uneasy about it and a bit confused,' he said. 'You feel violated by it. I think anyone would feel that way. This low-level crime is a real problem. In my part of the world, in Lincolnshire, you speak to farmers about equipment theft, sheds being broken into, tool theft. Robert Jenrick [the shadow justice secretary] has done some excellent work to highlight thefts from vans.'
It is not Davies's first experience of crime. This year he found himself in a confrontation with two men on a motorbike who were attempting to steal his car from outside his house. He called the police but while he was on the phone decided he had no choice but to intervene.
'They were going to take the car so at that point I went and shouted after them outside,' he said. 'But they didn't seem to have any fear whatsoever. The guy jumped out of the car, jumped on the back of the bike. The guy who was driving pulled in front of the car to where I was and basically said, 'Come on then'.'
Davies went back inside and the would-be thieves drove off. The police arrived 20 minutes later and found the plate that was fitted on the bike belonged to a van. The would-be thieves were not caught.
For Davies, his experiences are part of a much bigger picture, which he linked to the row over police funding in after the spending review. 'The buildup of low-level incidents creates a feeling of a lack of trust,' Davies, a shadow Treasury minister, said. 'Sadiq Khan [London's Labour mayor] has said that as a result of the spending review there's not going to be enough money and there may be police cuts. The Police Federation is saying that the chancellor is not listening to the concerns of communities who feel unsafe and not listening to our own home secretary. That's a problem.'
Would Davies advise others to intervene? 'I think they should, in the first instance, call the police. The only way we're going to tackle crime is by reporting it and making sure the authorities are aware. So you should not put yourself in danger, but you should call it out and you should call it in.'
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