Traffic Cops show follows Derbyshire officers on the trail of car criminals

The woman, who lives near Chesterfield, tells the Traffic Cops programme how her Range Rover Evoque was stolen from the road outside her house. Her son gave chase in a friend’s car and was spun 180 degrees when he was hit by the stolen vehicle after he pulled in front of it.

Both mum and son are interviewed on the Channel 5 programme as is the investigating officer Pc Chris Wells-Jackson who says that the son put himself at risk by pursuing the stolen car. Pc Wells-Jackson said: “It’s gone badly wrong a few times in the past where people have chased after stolen cars in their own vehicles and the criminals have turned on them and beat them up to such a serious extent that they could have died and they have come away with serious injuries.”

At the conclusion of the episode, presenter Jamie Theakston says: “No suspects have been identified in connection with the theft but the car was found the following day by the victim’s son.”

Crooks are using technology to hack key fobs and steal high value, high powered cars, say officers in the new series of Traffic Cops which returned to TV screens this week. Some thieves can take four or five cars a night, replace genuine registration plates with cloned ones and recoup £250,000 to £300,000.

Pc Matt Cork says on the opening episode: “Vehicle thefts seem to be massively on the rise, in particular we seem to be getting hit with a spate of two in one burglaries where a person or a group of people will burgle an address purely to get the keys to a vehicle on the driveway.”

Derbyshire’s traffic cops are battling a surge in car crime in an area which covers up to 1,000 square miles of some of the United Kingdom’s most dangerous roads. Across the UK a car is stolen every eight minutes.

The new series is broadcast on Mondays at 8pm and is available to watch on www.channel5.com/show/traffic-cops/season-13