Friday 12 August 2022 10:25 AM £12,000 Jaguar XF estate found by owner's daughter after being stolen from ... trends now
A woman who was let down by police ‘incompetence’ was forced to find her 73-year-old father’s stolen car herself after officers failed to do so.
Harry Harrington had his £12,000 Jaguar stolen from his driveway in Bournemouth overnight.
His daughter Becky Harrington, 32, claimed the police were ‘pretty slack’ when the theft was first reported so she decided to take matters into her own hands and flood social media with appeals to find it.
The Jaguar XF estate was stolen in the middle of the night on July 23 from Harry Harrington's driveway in Bournemouth. After what his daughter, Becky Harrington, said was a 'pretty slack' response from the police, she flooded social media with appeals to find the missing vehicle.
It comes amid a watchdog report that found that most victims of burglary, robbery and theft in England and Wales are being let down by not being given the justice they deserve.
Her majesty's chief inspector of constabulary, Andy Cooke, said current low charge rates were ‘unacceptable and unsustainable’.
Miss Harrington, unsatisfied with the police response, asked people in an online car sales page if anyone had seen the Jaguar XF estate.
The post ended up getting shared over 200 times on one for-sale page and then posted in a further 50 online groups.
Miss Harrington's appeal was shared hundreds of times on social media. Eventually she found some CCTV footage which showed the car abandoned with its doors left wide open. She claims when she asked Dorset Police if they would look at CCTV footage they said if they had 'the manpower' to do so. The footage is now being used to find the person who stole the car.
'I started a social media campaign, I added myself in every group I could find, I went into local petrol stations, I went into shops, I was going round with a photo of the car,' she told the Sun.
She added: 'I put it all over Facebook and I mean the post was being shared over 200 times in one For Sale page.
'It just went mental, a thousand shares in just a couple of hours. I was sitting there and sharing it in 20, 30, 40, 50 groups at a time.'
The 'detective' spent days visiting local shops and petrol stations to see if the car had been spotted on their CCTV cameras.
Eventually she found some CCTV footage which showed the car abandoned with one its doors left wide open.
In the footwell of the passenger seat, Miss Harrington found empty drinks bottles, dirty face masks, a parking charge letter as well as what looked like a used nappy.
The father and daughter were later shocked after Mr Harrington was slapped with a £60 fine speeding ticket, that the burglars had got while joyriding around the seaside town at 3.30am on the night it disappeared.
The silver Jag was found abandoned in the car park behind these flats in the seaside town. Miss Harrington eventually found the car after
