TENS of thousands of pounds worth of tools, equipment and vehicles were taken from Teesdale Conservation Volunteer (Rotters) in Startforth last week.
Police have been criticised for the time it took to respond but officers say they had to attend to three similar burglaries at the same time and were unable to react immediately. The brazen thieves are believed to have spent more than an hour raiding various sheds on the property last Wednesday night, dragging away heavy equipment and loading them into two vans, which they also stole.
The vans were bought at auction for £20,000 by site operator Martin Bacon’s son Philip only a week before. He had intended to start a business rebuilding vans and selling them off. Both vans were uninsured. Equally critical, tools bought to build a new eco-centre were taken.
Among the new tools was a Stihl saw bought for £700.
Mr Bacon said: “We still don’t know the value of everything that was taken.
“They even took the cement mixer. It is second-hand, what is that, £50? It will cost £500 for a new one. I just replaced the tools in my big tool box last year – it’s cost about £2,000. It is gone. My welder, my power tools, all gone.
“All our building equipment that we bought for this [eco-centre] are gone.”
Mr Bacon complained that even though he reported the break-in at 8am, a finger-print technician only arrived at 10.30am and no other officers arrived until about 4pm.
He said: “I told her [101 call operator] everything is gone, they have broken into everything and they have cleared me out. She said she would make it a priority. So, this is their priority?
“There is no victim support. There was no advice on making the vehicles secure. I asked [the PC] ‘all my vans are out [in the yard] and they have got the keys, what do I do?’. He said make them as secure as you can.
“They stole the keys from the key cabinet in the office. Now we can’t take the Rotters van out for collections today because we haven’t got any keys.” The thieves gained access to the site through two locked gates before breaking locks and entering the offices and sheds where items were stored. Broken Abloy padlocks were left lying in front of the sheds. Mr Bacon said: “They are the strongest you can buy – they cost £100 a shot.”
He added: “Now we have the unenviable task of dealing with the insurance.”
Insp Ed Turner, of Barnard Castle Neighbourhood Police Team, said a crime scene investigation (CSI) officer was despatched to the scene first because that is seen as a priority and a police officer was sent only later because of the high demand on resources that day.
He added: “We had three very similar burglaries that night and it was a very busy morning.”
Insp Turner said his “heart goes out” to Rotters because it provides a valuable and important service to the community, which would be severely disrupted by the burglary.
