Assya Berkoun’s smashed car window

THEFT from vehicles, including disabled people’s blue badges, is on the rise in Camden, but victims fear offenders will never be caught. Blue badges allow people with disabilities to park in designated parking bays and on yellow lines.

Data from the Metropolitan Police shows that theft from vehicles in Camden increased 17 per cent in the past year, compared to the previous year. While there were 2,205 thefts from vehicles in the borough, there were only two “sanctioned detections”, meaning only two offenders were identified. Residents have reported their windows being smashed and blue badges stolen in the past few months.

Those badges are then traded in person on the black market, police have said.

Gabriella Alexander said that two cars in College Place and one car in Pratt Street had their side windows smashed and blue badges stolen on the same weekend in January.

And Assya Berkoun, 25, who lives in Kentish Town went to her car last month and found her side window smashed, a huge rock on the driver’s seat and her blue badge missing but money still left in the compartment.

“It was so impactful that there was glass everywhere. I even found glass in the car’s boot,” Ms Berkoun said.

“It was more the invasion of privacy that really upset me and the fact that someone took away an entitlement that I have for my struggles and my disability. I think because I fought so hard and so long for that accessibility, it just really, really upset me. Because it was so close to home for a couple of days I didn’t really go anywhere or want to do anything. I was thinking what if people were watching me coming and going to my vehicle.”

Ms Berkoun has fibromyalgia, degenerative disc disease and other conditions that affect her mobility on a daily basis.

She thinks blue badges should be registered electronically to number plates, like how her congestion charge discount is applied automatically.

“Because the blue badge is registered to you as a person it’s harder to trace them,” she said. “So as soon as they get stolen, they’re lost on the black market.”

Ms Berkoun said she did not think the police had capacity to catch the thief. “They just see it as they’re not going to catch the perpetrator so there’s no point in investing police time into it,” she said. “I think that’s the biggest problem. But that comes from years of austerity and police cuts.”

Inspector Mark Gilchrist, neighbourhood policing lead for Camden and Islington, told the New Journal the force were seeing concentrated “pockets” of blue badge theft in an area.

“Where we get one offence, we see a number of offences in the same area which can give the perception that there is a significant increase in this type of crime,” he said.

“We know anecdotally that cars with badges that have been secured with proprietary devices allowing people to lock their badge to their steering wheel tend to be left alone. Because these thefts often happen on side streets with little CCTV, the investigative opportunities are very limited, which is why the detection rate is low. It’s very frustrating.”

He added: “Theft from motor vehicles is an area of crime we’re targeting. One of the activities we’re planning is using decoy vehicles across the borough. It’s not entrapment, we won’t put in place anything that’s not a normal opportunity.

“Blue badges will be one of the things that will be in there. Those vehicles are monitored, and we’re able to catch those that offend.”