Mum's car break-ins nightmare

A FULL-TIME mother is at her wits' end after her car has been broken into three times in just over a year since she moved to Islington.

Mum of two Samantha Pope, of Ball's Pond Road, moved to the borough from St John's Wood and has had her Land Rover Discovery broken into in March last year, May last year and April this year.

Each time the car was parked one street from her home - in Dove Road.

She said: "I lived in St John's Wood for three years and nothing like this ever happened until I moved to Islington.

"The sickening thing is that my parking permit won't allow me to park in Ball's Pond Road, where I could keep an eye on my car - so I have to park on the closest road it covers, which is Dove Road."

On all three occasions Mrs Pope phoned the police and told them that the break-in could have been caught on the two CCTV cameras that cover Dove Road.

But she says that after the latest incident she was told that, because the break-ins happened overnight, police did not have time to trawl through hours worth of CCTV recordings.

She said: "I was really cross when they said they didn't have the time to check the CCTV cameras, so I sent an e-mail to the Chief Superintendent of Islington police. I was contacted a few days later but they claimed that the recording was not good enough to see anything. What's the point of having CCTV cameras if they are such bad quality?

"It's ridiculous that I constantly have to worry about what state I'll find my car in when I leave the house each morning. You would have thought that knowing a CCTV camera was watching over your car would offer some comfort."

A spokeswoman for Islington police said: "In response to the question from Samantha Pope, the police are unable to comment on individual cases - however, we have pursued all reasonable lines of inquiry.

"In general, we need to balance operational needs against our resources and, in every instance, we will consider if viewing the CCTV is appropriate.