EXCLUSIVE Wheels of justice: How Londoners are having to find their own stolen cars themselves and take them back - because the Met Police are 'too busy'

Daily Mail​

22-06-2025

Beleaguered Londoners are increasingly having to turn 'vigilante' to 'steal' back their cars from thieves because the Metropolitan Police 'refuse to step in' and help.
Gangs of thieves are seemingly acting with impunity across the capital, brazenly snatching luxury motors or rare vehicles from driveways, garages and off the street.
However, victims claim that even when they have trackers installed in their cars showing where crooks have left them, that police are apparently unwilling to step in.
Owners, frustrated with the 'lack of support' are now turning into detectives - and risking their own safety to find their stolen vehicles and take them back from gangs.
And when victims then do eventually recover their cars, they have claimed officers 'don't have time' to investigate despite a 'slam dunk' of potential forensic evidence.
The Met is now facing increasing pressure to tackle the car crimewave blighting the city, which has surged in London, with 33,530 offences last year - up 1.6 per cent.
Among those to have put their own safety at jeopardy to take back their stolen property is John Howard.
The 58-year-old's cherished Volkswagen Golf R32 was taken by 's***bag' thieves outside his home in the Lloyd Park area of Walthamstow, north-east London.
Fortunately his motor, now a much-sought after collectors' item by petrol heads, had a Tile tracker hidden inside - which pinged the car's location hours later in a 'dodgy council estate' in Leyton, a couple of miles away.
However, when Mr Howard called the Met saying he was about to try and pick up his car, he was left 'disappointed' by the force's in-action.
'I didn't know what I would find when I got there,' Mr Howard told MailOnline last night. 'I didn't know if there would be a gang there or if there would be someone who wanted to stab me. I just wanted police there to support me but they never did.'
Entrepreneur Mr Howard, who runs maritime filter business Water Freedom, claimed when he found his car, there was a potential treasure trove of evidence in it that could have helped detectives catch those responsible but that officers didn't investigate.
'I was very disappointed by the police's lack of support,' he said. 'They were going to come and take fingerprints but they never did. They didn't bother to investigate.
'The thieves had stopped to get coffee somewhere and left a coffee cup on the back seat. They had also bought a pastry of some sort and the car stunk of weed.
'I was like, 'come on, you have loads of potential DNA evidence here'. But there was no interest from police.'
Mr Howard - who spoke out last night for the first time about the theft on October 30, 2022 - said he was astonished officers didn't even turn up when he pleaded with them to do so as he tried to collect his VW.
'I bet if I had said "I'm going to take a baseball bat and beat the thieves to death if I found them", the police would have been there in a second,' he added.
'I understand police are under-resourced but there are certain things or events you would think they would take more seriously.
'An ordinary member of the public going to a situation that has a high probability of them being exposed to significant risk, you think would be worth going out to. But clearly not.'
Mr Howard said he is now so worried about the potential of thieves coming back and stealing his beloved grey VW that he has armed himself in case he needs to tackle them.
'I do keep a baseball bat,' he admitted. 'If I did go out on the street I wouldn't want to do it unarmed.
'All things I wouldn't and shouldn't have to contemplate if our criminal justice system didn't equate to a cart blanche for these s***bags to make a living.'
Mr Howard's story came after it was revealed another of the capital's residents had been forced to recover their own motor after falling victim to brazen car thieves.
Mia Forbes Pirie and Mark Simpson discovered their car had been snatched from near their west London home in Brook Green on Wednesday morning.
The pair had it fitted with an AirTag locator meaning they were able to track the vehicle to an updated location in Chiswick at 10.30am.
But police informed them after dialling 999 that they did not know when they would be able to investigate and so could not offer immediate assistance.
The couple took matters into their own hands when Ms Pirie, 48, discovered the AirTag had last pinged on the road outside their home at around 3.20am.
The Jaguar E-Pace - a model that sold for about £46,000 new in 2024 - also had a 'ghost immobiliser' fitted which required the right buttons to be hit on the car's control unit before it could start.
Mr Simpson, 62, was nervous as he made the four-mile journey with his wife to the car's new location.
The pair discovered the vehicle on a quiet back street with its interior and carpets ripped apart by thieves who had attempted to access its wiring.
Forbes Pirie, a former solicitor and now an award-winning mediator, and Mr Simpson, a commercial barrister, had installed a series of additional security mechanisms on the car after previously experiencing the theft of a vehicle.
They said they thought the theft operation on their Jaguar must have been 'reasonably sophisticated' and likely involved a tow or flat-bed truck.
Neighbours later reported they had heard unusual noises at night.
In a post to LinkedIn, Ms Forbes Pirie admitted it was 'kind of fun' stealing back the car but questioned 'why we should have had to do that'.
She added: '[Is] it right that the police seem to have no interest in investigating what is likely to have been a reasonably sophisticated operation involving a flat bed truck… if there are no consequences, what is the incentive for people not to do more of this?'
But speaking to The Times afterwards Ms Forbes Pirie said she thought it was a lack of resourcing that had affected the Met's ability to respond.
She said: 'The police are under-resourced and it's a shame. But if there aren't any consequences to people stealing cars or a lot of the other crimes where there aren't any consequences, then I don't really see what the deterrent is to stop people from doing it more.'
Leading vehicle crime experts have insisted police are doing all they can to tackle the gangs.
However, they warned sophisticated organised gangs of crooks were likely behind many of the thefts.
Steve Whittaker works at vehicle recovery firm Tracker as the company's police liaison manager and said the scale of the thefts was alarming.
'Vehicle crime has moved on from the youths who would steal a car from the estate and then dump it... it's organised crime at an industrial level,' he warned last night.
'Lots of vehicles are taken to chop shops or hidden in containers and being shipped abroad.'
Former police officer Mr Whittaker insisted it was incredibly rare for victims of crime to have to recover their own vehicles without police support.
'This is very few and far between, it's extremely rare,' he added. 'I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but at Tracker we have a 95 per cent recovery rate.
'I'm not saying police don't send them them out. But police know the risks of that. You could be sending someone to the deepest darkest south London at the middle of the night. There's all sorts of risks with that.
'What members of the public have to be aware of is that there are a lot of competing demands facing the police.
'If there are 20 phone calls about a firearms incident, collecting your own car will be bottom of the list.'
His company works closely with the police, who recover vehicles fitted with the firm's sophisticated VHF trackers.
The tech is immune to GPS jamming kits used by sophisticated car crime crooks, which can block satellite signals, effectively hiding the vehicle.
The tracking devices are reportedly visible even when cars are parked underground, in shipping containers or overseas in Europe.
They can also be seen by police forces, who can then recover them.
So far the company has boasted of recovering almost 29,700 with the tech leading to more than 3,150 arrests.
Its latest set of figures show that in April, 150 vehicles were recovered - including a £28,000 Lexus that had been hidden in a shipping container at Felixstowe Port.
And a £22,000 Toyota Rav4, fitted with the kit, was reportedly found in a Salford 'chop shop' garage on false plates just five hours after being stolen.
All in all, a staggering £3.36m of vehicles were recovered in April alone.
Restaurant critic Giles Coren found himself in the crosshairs of the capital's car theft gangs after he had his £65,000 Jaguar I-Pace stolen - for a second time.
The TV presenter first had the eco car snatched in April 2021 but claimed The Met did not have the 'manpower to investigate'.
Then, just months later in July, Coren's car was snatched again, prompting the furious food critic to go out by himself to try and find his missing Jag.
He told his followers on social media: 'Heading off now, down into Camden to the housing estate where the car was last pinged. It's probably been stashed in the car park there.
'I'm travelling on my bicycle with the added incentive of course that if I don't find my f***ing car, I'm going to be travelling around on this b*****d for the rest of my life.'
In May 2023, plucky car owner Jo Coombs managed to get revenge on the crooks who snatched her Land Rover Discovery.
She had her luxury SUV pinched from her private parking spot outside her home in Battersea before setting out trying to take it back.
After reporting the incident to police, quick-thinking Jo then realised she might be able to use the GPS tracker installed as part of her insurance deal to find it.
'I could see that my car was taken at 4.34am, driven a mile away. Parked for 40 minutes. Driven again another mile. Parked,' she told The Sun.
'This continued a few times until eventually it was parked 1.9 miles from home. And it hadn't moved since.
'I called the police again. They told me to get my keys and go and reclaim my car. I had thought they would go, but no apparently it was quicker if I did.'
When she eventually found the Land Rover, crooks had been quick to install fake number plates in a bid to conceal it.
She added that police eventually arrived at the scene about 30 minutes.'
It's believed organised crime gangs are targeting luxury motors and family cars to order from suburban streets before then shipping them across the globe.
Leading vehicle theft experts have warned how Britain's love for high-spec cars could be fuelling the epidemic as ruthless crime bosses know there are 'rich pickings to be had' in the UK.
In plots which echo the film Gone in Sixty Seconds, where a gang target luxury cars, crime lords are ordering their henchmen to prowl the streets for motors before pouncing in the middle of the night while families are sleeping.
Mother-of-two Sarah has told MailOnline how her £35,000 Toyota RAV4 was stolen during a 4am raid on a suburban street in south east London. The family car was later seized in a shipping container - moments before it was about to leave the country.
The 37-year-old architect previously had been staying with her husband and two children at her father-in-law's house in Lewisham, when their car was nicked while they were asleep.
She immediately reported the theft after discovering the car, filled with the couple's expensive belongings, had been stolen when she went to grab a pushchair from the boot in the morning.
Weeks later, Sarah was informed that the thugs had raced across to an east London dockland in the middle of the night, where it was seized by police before it could be exported to Eastern Europe or Africa by a criminal enterprise.
She told MailOnline: 'I was fuming that someone had the gall to steal my car in the middle of the night.
'It really makes you feel violated, because you pay for a car with money that you've earned and worked hard for.'
She added: 'We're really at a loss through no fault of our own... the whole thing was infuriating.'
Police forces have revealed how criminals are packing several vehicles into individual shipping containers and hiding high-end cars such as Range Rovers behind mattresses and sofas to avoid being caught.
Many vehicles are snatched and shipped out of the country before the owners even wake up, with Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East common final destinations.
Since the war in Ukraine, Russia has also been flooded with Western cars as the country battles with strict sanctions.
Mike Briggs, an insurance industry veteran who is now UK executive director of the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators (IAATI), told MailOnline: 'The organised crime gangs are pushing ahead here in the UK. Not just here in the UK, it's now a global phenomena.
'Everything is being shipped wherever money can be made or the vehicles can be exchanged for drugs, weapons or used in human trafficking and things of that nature.
'It's really increased and the more we get into this century, the bigger the change to organised crime and the more developed they're becoming.'
Mr Briggs said that every country is being targeted by crime bosses, but he added: 'The thing about vehicles in the UK, we always want the highest spec here and we tend to get that high spec.
'If you bought a Mercedes in Germany itself, it would not be the same spec as the one here in the UK. We'd have the higher spec, so it's more valuable.
'Organised crime seems to know this as well. They do their homework and so there's rich pickings to be had.'
Mr Briggs, who also owns Vehicle Security Solutions Consultant (VSST), said it was 'very difficult for police and law enforcement' to crack down on this theft because of the more developed equipment being used.
He explained: 'Some of the equipment that's being used doesn't look like theft equipment. The little GameBoy devices that can be switched and programmed over to actually being used for theft of vehicles.
'I would say that more enforcement has really got its work cut out.'
A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'Every incident of vehicle theft is carefully assessed to identify and pursue possible lines of enquiry, including forensic evidence and available footage.