‘My jag got stolen and the police did nothing – here's how I got it back'
For a moment, I doubted myself. Had I parked it around the corner? I called my husband Mark who was working (he is a litigator while I am a former lawyer-turned-mediator and coach) to see if he had moved it overnight. When he confirmed he hadn't, we were utterly baffled.
This wasn't the first car that had vanished from that spot: about seven years ago our Fiat Abarth had been stolen and, concerned about that, Mark had installed a second immobiliser in the Jaguar on top of the one it came with. This required the driver to press a series of buttons to turn it on – I often had trouble with it so couldn't imagine how a criminal would be able to bypass it. Then we remembered the AirTag. If it was still working, it might show us where it was.
Mark opened the app. To his surprise, the car was less than three miles away from our house in Brook Green – on a quiet street in Chiswick called Gladstone Road. It dawned on us that it had indeed been stolen, but that it hadn't gone far.
Unsure of what to do, Mark did a quick Google search and then called 999. The police were very busy but said they might send a patrol car at some point – if they did, they would let us know. It was a very uncertain response.
Worried that we only had a short window to get the car back before it was gone forever, and desperate to avoid the nightmare of insurance claims, I persuaded Mark that we could investigate for ourselves. We set off in my little Volkswagen Polo, heading to Chiswick.
On the nine-minute drive, our natural personalities came out. Mark was cautious and tense: he thinks everything through quite carefully, whereas I am more gung-ho. He grew up in Kent, while I'm a born-and-bred Londoner and have always found it to be an incredibly safe place. I simply couldn't believe that I would be hurt in broad daylight in this city I have always called home.
Mark was also worried that people might be hanging around the car while I felt that anyone who steals cars wouldn't want to show their face and so would be unlikely to confront us. In retrospect, I wonder if – as a man – Mark thought he needed to protect me, whereas I didn't feel that responsibility. I just wanted to get the car back as quickly as possible.
My biggest fear was that we would find the AirTag abandoned on the tarmac – so much of modern life is about being disappointed, that this seemed the most likely scenario. So when we turned onto the road and saw the Jaguar sitting there, I was delighted. And maybe a little triumphant that our adventure had concluded so well.
We inspected the car. Outside, it was untouched, but inside it was a bit of a mess: ripped up carpets and air vents torn apart. Clearly, someone had tried to bypass the immobiliser but failed. Their efforts however, meant the car was now locked; even though we had the keys in our hands, there was no way of getting it home.
We stood on the empty street, which had a small block of council flats on one side, for a few minutes before deciding to go back to our house and sort out the problem from there. A couple of hours later, after proving ownership, the Jaguar was delivered on a flatbed by a tow-truck company.
Over time, we started piecing together what had happened. The AirTag showed that the car had been in Brook Green at 3.20am, and the neighbours said they had heard a commotion about an hour or two after that, which they had assumed was the binmen coming early, but which must have been the criminals loading the car onto a flatbed. The police had asked us to keep them informed, so we called 101 and told them what had happened.
As for fixing the car up, that has been relatively easy – we had to sort out the immobiliser and then put the carpets and the air vent back as they were. The incident occurred last Tuesday and by the weekend, we were driving it to the countryside. I felt slightly icky as we set off, knowing that strangers had been inside, but mostly I was okay. They weren't too disrespectful, and I was grateful for that.
What hadn't been made clear was that by fixing it up and then using it, we were destroying evidence. When forensics examined the car a week after the incident, they said there was no hope of finding any usable DNA as far too many people handled it in the interim. Yes, it would have been inconvenient not to use it, but we would have done so if it meant they could have gathered some evidence. Not telling us this was an oversight on the police's part and one I found very frustrating.
Still, I am keen not to place too much blame on them. Blame feels good – but it is too simplistic. An officer once told me that it is normal to have 20 urgent calls on a peak night and only two to three people on duty. It is so easy to say that the increase in crime is all the police's fault – but the reality is more complex. The system is broken: there is too much focus on locking people up, but putting them in prison just teaches them how to become better criminals. If you rehabilitate them, then they become better members of society. Sadly, this is not popular with voters - but my hope is that public opinion can change.
Mostly, I worry about deterrents. If there are none, crimes like these will only proliferate. The people who stole my car were sophisticated criminals: they knew how to hack an immobiliser and had access to a flatbed. We need to ask whether it is good for society that the police force lacks the funding to investigate them properly – and think seriously about what the consequences of not doing so might be.
As told to Melissa Twigg
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