Newark officers trek miles through countryside to track down stolen 4x4s

Drone flyovers and miles upon miles of foot searches from Newark officers have helped reverse a trend of vehicle thefts.

Rewind to the summer and the neighbourhood team were investigating a Land Rover or Range Rover being stolen from the region every 10 days on average.

That’s after 40 separate reports came in between February and October – both locally and from the surrounding counties – of these 4x4s and SUVs being taken.

Fast forward to the present day and Newark officers have managed to recover 22 of these vehicles, while reports of similar thefts have slowed down significantly, with three reports coming in over the last three months.

Large numbers of the stolen cars were found hidden or abandoned at various locations in and around Newark, with a lot of time – and energy – spent by the neighbourhood policing team and response officers alike to track them down.

The officers have utilised all kinds of tactics to recover the vehicles and return them to their owners, including using drones to fly over areas, trawling through social media for information, and speaking to landowners and farmers.

Guided by this intelligence, Newark officers have walked miles and miles through woodland, hills, and fields, to find the vehicles – no matter how well hidden they were.

PC Lydia Day, of Nottinghamshire Police, said:

“We’ve managed to track down these cars to all sorts of different hiding places, including ones that had been dumped in the middle of nowhere and submerged within bushes.

“All kinds of tactics have been used by our teams to reunite these vehicles with their owners – from drone flyovers, to liaising with local council workers, and speaking to farmers to see if they’d spotted anything suspicious.

“Our officers have put so much time, energy and steps into finding these cars, with miles upon miles trodden through rural woodland, hills and fields.    

“The end result has seen us recover more than half the Land Rovers and Range Rovers reported stolen, while the number of vehicle thefts has dropped significantly as well, which is really pleasing to see.

“Despite this, however, we know there’s still an ongoing risk of these thefts happening, so we’d encourage owners of Land Rovers and other 4x4s to remain vigilant to make it as hard as possible for thieves to target their vehicles.”