Why wasn't the camera fixed?

11:59am Friday 2nd February 2007

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A HIGH Wycombe mother says police could not use CCTV coverage to help trace the thief who targeted her son - because the system was broken.

Helen Catlin's son Dean Doyle, 13, had his mobile phone snatched on Saturday, while making a call at High Wycombe bus station.

Miss Catlin took Dean to the police station to report the incident and gave descriptions of two youths, one of whom who had taken the phone. She said officers were hoping to get CCTV footage of the crime from the station's cameras.

But Miss Catlin, 38, of Woodside Road, was stunned when she was phoned by police and told the cameras had not been working at the time.

She said: "I think it is disgusting. I just think that they are trying to welcome people into the town and say it is a safe town so if it is broken why isn't it fixed?

"My son had such a good description and I don't believe the police would have kept him there for two hours if they didn't believe they had something to go on.

"Then they find out it wasn't working - that means surely anything can happen in there."

Dean's phone was snatched around 6.30pm while he waited for his bus inside the station with a friend. He was calling his mum when two older boys sat down next to them. The phone was snatched by one of them and they ran off towards West Wycombe Road.

Alan Peach, retail development director at Multiplex, which controls the cameras, said there had been a fault with the server on Friday meaning the cameras were not recording.

Mr Peach said: "We regularly review security with the centre management team and the police and will continue to do so to minimise the risk of this type of fault re-occurring."

Police say the offender was around 17-years-old, slim, 5ft 9ins tall, and Asian. He was wearing a brown and black striped beanie hat, a brown hooded top, dark blue jeans and had long sideburns thin-ning at the end.

The other boy is described as chubby, black, about 5ft 8ins tall and also around 17-years-old. He was wearing a dark beanie hat with a peak at the front and a black tracksuit jumper and bottoms.

* Call police on 08458 505 505 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111