POLICE AND INDUSTRY CONTINUE TO WORK IN PARTNERSHIP TO COMBAT CRIME
The Combined Industry Theft Solutions (CITS) group, in partnership with police and partners, held the first training event of 2025, hosted at agricultural dealer Farol in Milton Common, Oxfordshire.
On the 4th January 25, the first CITS police training event of 2025 took place, in conjunction with the National Construction and Agricultural theft team (NCATT), Police liaison officers of the official CESAR Scheme, representatives of Cantrack Global, Leica, Clancy’s and J Murphy & Son’s.
The special police training event welcomed over 60 police officers from regional and specialist police forces.
The officers attended a full day's training, which was opened by CITS chairman Ian Elliott, the Group Head of Security for the utility company Clancy’s.
The police only CITS training events have been rolled out since 2022, aiming to highlight the current threats and the importance of working in partnerships to tackle crime, in particular to the construction and agricultural sectors.
The training was delivered by both specialist police training officers and industry experts including, DS Chris Piggott, of NCATT, Police Liaison officers on behalf of the official CESAR Scheme and John Musset Director of Investigations at Cantrack Global, who all taught officers about current threats around Construction and Agricultural machinery theft and highlighted techniques to identify stolen machinery, rogue equipment movements and common tricks used by criminal gangs to target industry.
The training event was supported by the Home Office industry schemes, CESAR, and MicroCESAR, both identification marking systems used by Police to easily identify ownership of plant and machinery used on both farms and construction sites.
Officers also had the opportunity to learn about the new RAPID search application. RAPID, the Registered Assets Police Information Database, is a powerful web-based search tool designed to significantly enhance the speed and efficiency of plant and machinery identification. With advanced mobile technology, RAPID enables officers to access the CESAR Database of over 650,000 registered assets directly from their smartphones, allowing for quick identification of stolen property and swift progress in investigations.
CITS Chairman Ian Elliott commented on the success of the day; “Yesterdays event was another huge success, and the feedback so far really highlights the importance of these training events, in order to help support all police forces to tackle the organised criminal gangs that are making theft a huge problem for farmers and industry.
CITS in partnership with police, crime-fighting organisations and machinery manufacturers provide officers with the knowledge and detection techniques to combat equipment theft and to be one step ahead of the criminals ”
Farol Technology Consultant, Dylan Flood, commented on the success day; “The training event has enabled us to continue working closely with the local police force, helping to reduce rural crime that effects our customers. This event is something that we are more than happy to support due to the rising level of equipment cost and therefore theft. The feedback from all attending was positive and we look forward to the future training opportunities that were being discussed.”
CITS, an industry forum comprising of representatives from the Home Office, Police, Insurers and Industry will continue to host a series of further, free to attend, police only training events in 2025. Officers should register their interest for future events, with faye@cits.uk.com
Further details can be found on the CITS website www.cits.uk.com
