Residents invited crime prevention event as dot peen property marking comes to Scarborough

The local Neighbourhood Policing Team will be at Hutton Buscel Village Hall on Saturday (January 19),10am-2pm, to provide safety and security advice, and offer a free ‘dot peen’ property marking service.

Dot peen property marking machines enables police to etch a unique reference number onto valuable items of property. This acts as a deterrent to potential theft, and will also help to recover stolen property if it’s found.PCSO Ria Lockey, of Filey and Eastfield Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: “The borough of Scarborough is a really safe place, but we do know that when the nights are dark, burglars will be on the look-out for empty homes and unattended outbuildings containing valuable property.“Marking your property is one of the most effective ways to protect yourself from being a victim of crime. Criminals will see the permanent unique number, and know immediately that your property is too hot to handle. If the worst happened and you were targeted, marked property is far harder to sell on, and we are much more likely to be able to return it to you.“Please come along to our community event at Hutton Buscel this weekend, and we will be happy to give advice and discuss any concerns you might have.”Dot peen marking involves using a tungsten carbide-tipped pin to indent an object with dots to create a visible, permanent unique number. The unique number will be entered onto the national Immobilise property register database.

Every year, police recover hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stolen property from the hands of criminals, but all too often there is no way of identifying its rightful owners.

Being able to trace the ownership of the property not only helps people get the property back, but it can also provide evidence that is vital in securing convictions.

The machines in Scarborough can mark at a speed of two characters per second, to an accuracy of 0.006mm, and is suitable for everything from bikes and garden tools to PlayStations and laptop computers.You can find out more at northyorkshire.police.uk. Property marking sessions are publicised on Facebook, and on Twitter using the hashtag #whatisdotpeen.