While an erstwhile ‘Ali Baba’ is in custody, Eastern Waikato Police are still collating the items found in his cave after a treasure trove of stolen property was recovered near Morrinsville.
Acting Sergeant, Shane Doddrell, of the Morrinsville Police said thousands of dollars worth of property believed stolen in rural burglaries around Morrinsville and TeAroha was recovered during the search of a Waitoa property on 02 July.
“We’d gone there originally seeking a stolen motorbike. Instead we recovered a ride on lawn mower, chainsaws, a post hole borer, waterblasters, welders, electrical tools, tool chests, xbox's and games, laptops, flat screen tv's, stolen firearms, gunsafes, cannabis, methamphetamine and cash.
“Such was the haul we had to acquire a tandem axle furniture trailer in order to remove all the recovered property.”
Mr Doddrell said while a man was arrested in relation to the items recovered from his property, the search for others involved continues.
“This person was a focus of our inquiries in relation to his receiving of property taken in a spate of rural burglaries in and around Morrinsville and Te Aroha.
“The search was one of the more successful ones I’ve been involved with since joining Police and we certainly expect it to slow down the rate of burglaries in the rural community that have been occurring.”
Mr Doddrell said Police like to target receivers as this removes a potential market burglars use to off-load stolen property.
“At the same time we work to locate the burglars and the receivers of stolen property there’s an important role the public can play to assist us.
“As well as calling Police and noting down registration numbers and descriptions of suspicious vehicles and people, property owners can us the SNAP website (https://www.snap.org.nz) to record images and serial numbers of their valuables.”
“This is particularly helpful to us in situations like this as we can marry up the data from SNAP provided to us by the victims to items recovered, and prove the person that has them does so illegally.”
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