Vehicle related thefts have been one of the highest recorded type of crime in Sutton during 2022.

On the 29th of November, at Petersham Close, Ella Black's Blue Mini Cooper was broken into near Homefield Preparatory School, Sutton. The car was parked on Petersham Close before Ella Black walked down the road to pick her 10 year old child up from Homefield Preparatory School. After briefly collecting her child, and returning to her car, Ella and her son were unpleasantly shocked to realise that one of the Mini’s windows was busticated.

The individual responsible for the crime stole a lightly hued brown leather hand bag, in which contents contained Ella's wallet that contained her bank cards and drivers licence as well as other valuable handheld items. Since the 29th of November, Ella has paused the majority of her cards however the individual responsible has spent over £50 on a combination of different cards that Ella hadn’t been able to pause. The thief is still unidentified. 

A few days after the incident, Ella Black reached out to the police. When talking about crime in Sutton, the police said that there had been a total of 64 vehicle thefts on Petersham Close over course of the year. That equates to roughly 5 cases per month and one case per week in only a small segment of Sutton. Based on averages extracted from various data websites, it is clear that around 1900 of all Sutton crime cases in the past year have been car thefts. 

As a result, the Sutton neighbourhood watch website published a page on the precautions to take to keep your car and its possessions safe. The website said ‘In some parts of Sutton theft from vehicles is the most reported crime each month. Locking your vehicle and keeping possessions out of sight not only protects your own property, it makes it less likely for further crime to escalate.’ The website went on further to talk about mechanisms like locking your car, using a wheel lock and installing an alarm to prevent criminals from targeting your vehicle in the future.