New off-road police motorcycles to tackle bike-related crime in Northern Lincolnshire

Alongside our partners, we are committed to tackling the antisocial and criminal use of motorcycles across our communities.

We have been working with both North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire Community Safety Partnerships, as well as community groups Big Local North Cleethorpes and Capacity Building Limited to help tackle these issues.

Our local dedicated officers and staff now have access to four new specialist off-road motorcycles – supporting them to better target our activities to tackle the antisocial and criminal use of motorcycles across our Southbank communities, to take action and to hold those responsible to account.

As part of Op Yellowfin, officers have continued to proactively stop motorcyclists and deal with those who either ride in an antisocial manner or are believed to be involved in crime. These new motorcycles will enhance that response and have already taken to the streets to deter criminals and deal with those driving in an antisocial way.

Speaking about the partnership that has assisted in bringing the motorbikes to our streets is Paula Grant, Managing Director of Capacity Buildings: “One of our specialisms is facilitating collaborative work with Humberside Police’s neighbourhood teams and residents.

“We enabled the specific support they needed to address community safety issues raised by residents.

“We followed this up by jointly working with all partners involved to find an acceptable solution for both residents and policing teams, which resulted in the formation of this new team.”

Humberside Police Superintendent Paul French said: “These new motorbikes are taking to our streets with officers who have over a combined 70 years’ motorcycle experience and 50 years’ police service in both roads policing and response driving and holding College of Policing training in both on and off-road motorcycle riding.

“The bikes themselves are Honda CRF300L, which are 300cc liquid-cooled single-cylinder bikes that have been modified specifically to our requirements.  All riders will be wearing Alpinestars Class 2 Kit with carbon helmets fitted with both radio and Bluetooth communications. Each rider will have body-worn video capability to enable us to gather video footage of any incident they are involved in.

“The police officers who are riding these amazing machines have volunteered for these roles due to a passion for motorcycles and wish to address the issues of them being targeted for theft and used in crime.

“We have worked really hard over the past few years to tackle the ongoing issues of the misuse of motorcycles – seizing more than 300 motorcycles and quads in the past 12 months across our North and North East Lincolnshire communities.

“We know from listening to our communities the impact that this type of problem can have, and we are absolutely committed to doing all we can, working together with a range of our partner agencies, in addition to our local communities to take action and to make our communities safer and stronger.

“As part of Op Yellowfin we have spoken to hundreds of people in the community who have been really supportive of our work and I know they will be delighted to see our officers out on these specialist motorcycles, directly tackling those who are blighting our neighbourhoods.

“We continue to build and develop existing relationships with the local biker community, businesses and residents to help provide support along with solutions to tackle this issue head on.

“We continue to listen – and I again appeal to local residents and businesses to tell us about the problems they are experiencing – we will listen and we will use this feedback to help targeted our responses.

“In these summer months we do have hot-spot areas where we have seen increases in reported incidents. We will continue to be in these areas, using both highly visible and plain clothes patrols, alongside running community surgeries and keeping residents up to date through #MyCommunityAlert as we continue to take action.

“If you have any information which you feel might help us in our ongoing efforts to tackle this problem, or about where a motorcycle is being stored which is being used antisocially, or criminally, we want to hear from you – and you can call 101 or speak with your local Neighbourhood Policing Team.

“We know people sometimes may not want to report this directly to the police so they can also report anything like this anonymously to the independent charity CrimeStoppers on 0800 555 111 or by visiting our website for more information.

“Please look out for our specialist off road bikes throughout the weeks and months ahead and thank you to our communities and our partners for their continued support”.

We want to remind owners of some crime prevention tips to keep their motorbike safe:

• Always lock your bike with its fork and ignition locks.
• Invest in a secondary quality disc and chain locks.
• Secure your bike to a rail, anchor point or anything solid.
• Where there are no anchor points lock bikes together with your friends.
• Fit a quality approved alarm and tracking system. Invest in an insurance-approved ID and marking system (eg. micro dot, DNA marking, acid etching…)
• Park and lock your bike in well lit, busy locations. Try not to leave it in a remote area especially overnight.
• Cover your bike. It can hide its value and your security kit as well as protect it from the weather.