DNA Protection From Operation Shield Spreads To More Areas

POLICE are helping to tackle burglaries in Hoole and Newton in Chester by offering SelectaDNA marking kits to householders in target areas.

There have been a number of burglaries in roads near to a local cycleway with thieves using the track as a means of escape.

This prompted PCSO Keith Bartlett and local councillors to join forces to bring SelectaDNA to the area as part of Cheshire Police’s wide-reaching anti-burglary campaign, Operation Shield.

Operation Shield has been a huge success following its launch in March 2015. The initiative, which has seen thousands of homes, shops and local businesses protected, has now been extended to include rural homes and schools.

Cheshire Police has already recorded the lowest number of domestic burglaries for the month of March in 25 years - and have recently announced these additional crime reduction statistics for the Blacon and Lache areas:

• Burglary dwelling down 50% in Blacon and 65% in Lache – compared to the same time last year (February-August 2014)

• Burglary for non-dwelling down 45%

• Vehicle crime reduced.

Cllrs Angie Chidley and Alex Black (Hoole) & Cllrs Richard Beacham and Gill Watson (Newton) have now agreed to fund additional SelectaDNA kits, which will allow residents in areas such as Sefton Road, Greenbank Road and Mannings Lane to uniquely mark goods in their homes with the invisible DNA solution.

Each DNA code is unique to each address, so that if thieves break in and take a TV or other electronic items that have been marked with SelectaDNA, it makes it very difficult for them to sell them on. If police find the stolen goods they can reunite them with their owners.

PCSO Bartlett said: “These kits have been given to a lot of homes and we hope that it will put thieves off because they can’t move them on easily afterwards. Anyone found with property marked with SelectaDNA will be in possession of stolen goods.”

More than 6,900 suspects have already been screened in custody by Cheshire Police for traces of SelectaDNA as part of the ongoing campaign.