caused to any person; (c) owing to
the driving of the vehicle, an accident occurred by which damage was caused to any
property, other than the vehicle; and (d) damage was caused to the vehicle. A person
guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on conviction under
indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or … if it is
proved that the accident caused the death of the person concerned, fourteen
years.’
Aggravated vehicle taking is what you will be charged with if you use threats or actual
violence while stealing a vehicle. The American term is ‘carjacking’, sometimes
shortened to ‘jacking’, which is creeping into British usage, mainly through
youngsters who have been exposed to an almost constant diet of American films and TV
shows.
DRAGGERS
----
A dragger is a
professional car thief. The Romany word ‘drag’ dates from the days of horse-drawn
vehicles, when the horse would drag the vehicle behind it. Hence, a place where cars
race is known as a ‘drag strip’ and a main road as the ‘main drag’. Draggers steal
vehicles for a variety of reasons. Low down on the car-theft totem pole is the
joyrider – kids and amateurs who steal cars for the pure pleasure of driving, and
sometimes in order to annoy the police and entice them to chase the stolen car.
These people are not really criminals in the professional sense of the word, more
thrill seekers and car enthusiasts who cannot afford or are too young to buy their
own cars. In the old days, when car security was not really up to much, the perfect
way for a dragger to go equipped was with a set of twirls –
double-edged FS car keys that would fit almost any motor. You could normally get
these from a friendly, or bent, garage or a breakers’ yard. It was simply a matter
of going through your keys until you found one that would fit the door. This would
inevitably fit the ignition, too. Any car was fairly easy to steal, but the
sure-fire winners with a set of twirls were Fords and Austins. Motorbikes were also
pretty easy to steal, though more often than not the potential thief needed to do a
bit of hot-wiring in order to start the ignition. The professional
dragger will steal cars to order, sometimes for armed robbery teams. Professional
draggers also make good money by stealing a vehicle, stripping down all the
removable parts and selling them on.
See Boys
, Hot-wiring
, Twirls
RAM-RAIDING
----
Some say that the crime of ram-raiding originated in the north of England, around
Tyneside, in the 1990s, but it hasactually been around since the
1930s and is prevalent all over the world. The first use of this term to describe it
was, however, in Belfast in the late 1970s. The crime involves using a vehicle as a
battering ram to smash into shops in order to steal goods. Most ram-raiders are
opportunistic thieves who plan no further than driving a stolen car through the
window of their local supermarket in order to steal cigarettes and alcohol, but
there are also professional thieves who take ram-raiding very seriously and make it
a very lucrative form of crime. Professional ram-raiders target high-end shops that
sell designer items and jewellery. The ‘ram car’, usually a heavy SUV, is driven at
speed through the front of the target premises, smashing a way in so that the
thieves can jump out and grab the loot. The perpetrators then transfer the stolen
goods to a couple of ‘clean’ vehicles parked outside and make their getaway, leaving
the ram car blocking access to the premises. Speed and surprise are the main
elements in this crime, and the typical professional ram raid will take no more than
three or four minutes. Alarms are no deterrent. The only way to combat ram-raiders
is by placing bollards or concrete blocks in front of your premises so that raiders
cannot get their vehicle close enough to it. Whereas the amateur ram-raider