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Police show plants that could help beat burglars

Mar 29 2009 by Paul James, Sunday Sun

Colin Hopkins of Hartlepool Council with one of the crime-busting plants

IT’S a case that could do with the investigative skills of a privet detective.

But even TV cop John Nettles might struggle to get to grips with this one.

For an army of horticultural crimestoppers are being unleashed to keep burglars at bay this summer.

The shrubs are being mobilised to act as “nature’s own barbed wire” and secure homes and gardens from intruders.

The Plants Against Crime 2009 programme aims to demonstrate to homeowners how they can secure their property through the use of certain types of bushes to “plant out crime”.

Its first event of the summer took place in Hartlepool yesterday and others will follow until October.

Now into its second decade of operation, a variety of prickly hedges have sprung up across Teesside over the past 10 years and crime prevention chiefs say they are expecting another busy summer.

Retired police crime prevention officer Colin Hopkins, who now works as an advisEr for Hartlepool New Deal for Communities, said there was a huge range of suitable shrubs to run alongside fences.

They include holly, berberis, pyrocanthia and rosa rugosa, while fruit and veg growers could use a bramble bush along the boundary of their garden.

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