Vehicle thefts in Devon and Cornwall remained relatively stable between 2015-16 and 2020-21, when there were 964 and 955 offences respectively, before climbing sharply to 1,491 offences in 2022-23. Although offences fell slightly to 1,392 in 2024-25, they rose again to 1,550 in 2025-26.<\/p>\n
Det Ch Supt Ben Deer from the force, said: “The increase in vehicle theft offences is being driven by a range of factors, many of which are being seen across the UK.”<\/p>\n
Organised crime groups are thought to be responsible for a significant proportion of thefts, targeting vehicles for resale, dismantling them for parts or moving them through wider criminal networks.<\/p>\n
Theft methods have also become increasingly sophisticated, with offenders using technology such as electronic key cloning and signal amplification to “bypass modern vehicle security systems”, Deer said. <\/p>\n
Vehicles could often be stolen quickly while leaving few forensic opportunities for investigators.<\/p>\n
“The rising value of used vehicles and vehicle parts has also made this type of offending more profitable,” he said.<\/p>\n
He also said vehicle theft investigations had become more complex because offenders often operated across force boundaries.<\/p>\n
“Devon and Cornwall Police remains committed to pursuing all available lines of inquiry and bringing offenders to justice wherever the evidence supports it,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vehicle thefts in Devon and Cornwall remained relatively stable between 2015-16 and 2020-21, when there were 964 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-802525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}