West Midlands Police has uncovered a large chop shop after tracing a stolen car to a scrap yard in Birmingham.
Officers found the partially-dismantled Range Rover – stolen in Kings Norton on 22 May – at a compound in Cheston Road, Birmingham, at around 11.15am. It was surrounded by an array of vehicle parts, including engines, bumpers and other body shells, and that have already been linked some to other car thefts.
Many parts were already packaged up for shipment. The site has now been sealed and a forensic vehicle examiner will now examine everything in a bid to link items to other offences.
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Officers also found a ‘jammer’ which is a gadget car thieves use to block the frequency from key fobs so vehicles are left insecure when owners believed they’re locked.
Superintendent Jim Munro said: “We run a roads policing operation through the night on the look out for car thieves. It’s been really successful and last year the operation netted more than 2,000 arrests and recovered 1,000 stolen cars.
“But it’s also important we go after the market for stolen vehicles – and often that’s ‘chop shops’ that quickly dismantle the cars and sell on the parts. Often those stolen parts go to repair vehicles bought by criminals from salvage yards so buyers are unwittingly driving around in cars consisting of stolen parts.
“This is a great find by our officers and initial enquiries suggest this is a sizeable chop shop and may well have been the final destination for many stolen vehicles.”
No arrests have been made at this stage.
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