New `Blue Room` at police station will help identify stolen property

Officers in Loughborough have set up a new property processing room to increase the chances of returning stolen property to its rightful owner. Leicestershire Constabulary’s new ‘Blue Room’ has been fitted with specialist equipment designed to enable officers to check recovered property under large ultraviolet (UV) lights to see if they have been forensically property marked.

The police are encouraging members of the public to mark their valuables using forensic kits such as Smartwater or Selecta DNA, which are visible only under UV light. The owners details are kept on a national database and the items can then be traced back to them if they are lost or stolen and found by the police.

Officers are also keen to promote ‘Immobilise’ (www.immobilise.com), which is the world’s largest free register of ownership details. It can be used by members of the public and businesses to register their possessions or company assets and it is used by all UK police forces to trace owners of lost and stolen property.

Officers have also secured funding from the police and the local education authority to forensically mark equipment, such as computers, in seven schools across Loughborough.

PC Charlie Wright, who came up with the idea, said: “All items of property that are recovered by the police in Loughborough, or handed into us, will now be processed through the Blue Room. That includes everything from jewellery to bicycles.

“The large UV lights will show even the tiniest traces of the marking solution and officers will also be using an electronic scanner to see if, for example, bikes have been electronically tagged.

“We also have two portable UV lights which can be taken to the scene of a crime if it isn’t possible to bring the items into the police station, or taken to specific locations such as scrap yards.

“The idea behind the room is to put all the systems we already have of identifying property into one room. As far as I am aware, this facility doesn’t exist anywhere else in the force and it’s already generating interest from other police stations that are keen to see how it works.”

Phil Cleary, chief executive of SmartWater, added: “We are delighted to partner with Loughborough police on this initiative as a means of both detecting and deterring crime.

“SmartWater has amassed more than 1,000 convictions across the UK and maintains a 100 per cent conviction rate in court, so it is well known to the criminal fraternity, who will actively avoid coming into contact with it at all costs.”

Smartwater is being made available to buy from the Neighbourhood Watch Association at Loughborough police station at a discounted price of £20.