Police say some cars are stolen to order

With organised vehicle theft becoming increasingly common, the PSNI announced on Wednesday that it had entered agreement with a company which makes tracking devices.

Cars fitted with the devices will now be easily located by police through equipment installed in police vehicles.

More than 100 police vehicles are fitted with the Police Tracking Computer, which can pick up signals from tracker units.

When a vehicle or item equipped with a tracker is stolen, the company activates the device so that police can find it, even if it has been hidden in a garage or container.

Assistant Chief Constable Judith Gillespie said the system was already more than demonstrating its worth.

"A recent joint operation between the PSNI, An Garda Siochana and Tracker involved the tracking of a stolen vehicle through Northern Ireland into a storage yard in the Republic of Ireland," she said.

THREE GROUPS MOST AFFECTED High value vehicles (car or plant machinery) worth �15,000 or more, often stolen to order High risk vehicles where major components can be used for other purposes, like a van engine used to power a taxi or a car engine used to power a boat Critical vehicles, such as emergency generators used in power cuts, which are hard to replace

"(It) led police to recover 33 other stolen items ranging from cattle trailers to generators, motorcycles, quads, plant and equipment.

"Thieves now have to think twice about stealing a car because it might be tracked."

Police say about 10,000 trackers are in operation in the province, and to date, up to �2.6m-worth of stolen vehicles and equipment have been recovered.

Trackers have also led detectives to other items stolen by the same organised criminal and paramilitary gangs including drugs, counterfeit goods and weapons, they say.

Figures published last April by the government showed a sizeable drop in the number of cars stolen last year - a drop of almost 2,500 cars stolen in 2003 compared to 2002.

South Belfast showed the biggest improvement with the numbers of cars stolen cut by almost half.