Industrial theft is usually pictured as a night-time crime: cut fences, empty yards, a truck idling at the gate. A Victoria Police appeal from June described something more ordinary, and in some ways more unsettling.
What police reported
According to the release, at 5pm on Friday 22 May a man drove a gold Ford sedan with stolen number plates into a business's warehouse on Sydney Road in Campbellfield. He looked around inside for a while, then put a length of copper into the car.
An employee came out of a nearby building and approached him. The man put the copper back and left before police arrived. Police said a second person was in the car. Hume detectives released CCTV and images of a man they wanted to speak to.
Nothing was taken, and nobody was reported hurt. It is still a useful case, because it shows a risk most sites don't plan for.
The door was the invitation
Warehouse doors are open for most of the working day. Trucks come and go, forklifts move stock in and out, and in warm weather the doors may be up just for air. From the street, an open roller door looks like any other part of a busy site.
That's what makes a drive-in approach work. A car pulling into an open warehouse at 5pm doesn't look unusual. Staff may assume it's a customer, a courier or a contractor. By the time anyone wonders why it's there, the boot is open.
The end of the day on a Friday adds to it. People are finishing up, attention is elsewhere, and the site may be thinner on staff than at midday.
Challenging someone isn't the plan
In this case an employee approached the man and he left. That worked out, but it's not something a business should rely on, and it puts staff in an uncomfortable and potentially risky position. A person who has driven into a warehouse with stolen number plates has already shown they're prepared to take a chance.
The better approach is to make the site itself do the work, so that a car can't drive in without someone deliberately letting it.
Keeping cars out while keeping the site working
The trick on a working site is separating the vehicles that should come in from the ones that shouldn't. A few options, depending on how the site runs:
- Removable bollards across doors that don't need constant vehicle access. If a door is used for a few deliveries a day, a pair of removable bollards can sit across it and be lifted out when a truck arrives.
- Bollards that narrow the opening. A forklift needs a set width. A sedan or ute may need a little more. On some doors, fixed bollards can reduce the clear width so forklifts still pass but road vehicles can't. That depends on the specific machines, so it needs measuring, not guessing.
- Separate pedestrian and vehicle paths. If customers and couriers have a clear walk-in route and a place to park away from the doors, a car driving up to a roller door stands out immediately.
- Visitor parking away from stock. Cars that park right at the door can be loaded in seconds. Cars parked twenty metres away can't.
We haven't seen the Campbellfield site and aren't suggesting what it should have done. These are general measures for any warehouse with doors that sit open during the day.
The cameras did their job
One more point. Police were able to release CCTV and images of the man and the car, which is exactly what cameras are for. They don't stop a theft, but they make investigation possible. The most useful camera angles show the vehicle's approach and its number plate, not just the inside of the building. Here the plates were reportedly stolen, which is a reminder that a camera is one layer, not the whole answer.
A quick check for site managers
- Which doors are open during the day, and for how long?
- Could a car drive straight in through any of them without anyone opening anything?
- Where do visitors and couriers park, and how close is that to stock?
- Is the end of the day, when doors are still up but staff are thinning out, covered by anyone?
The copper in Campbellfield went back on the shelf because an employee happened to look up. A site layout that doesn't rely on that is a sensible thing to aim for.