Letter: The cost of burglary

Mrs Elizabeth Mills
Monday 03 May 1993 00:02 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Sir: I am sickened by the latest IRA bombing of the City and I have every sympathy with the companies that have been affected by it.

However, I would like to draw your readers' attention to another atrocity that is costing companies millions of pounds: burglary.

We are a small national medical research charity struggling to raise funds for research into the diseases of the elderly, and in the past four days our new premises have been burgled twice and valuable equipment has been taken each time. The police have advised us that in all probability, someone has a full list of our remaining equipment and as soon as an 'order' is raised we will be victims of yet another (hopefully this time, attempted) burglary.

Not only do burglaries hit the victim financially, through insurance excesses, loaded future premiums and cost of lock repairs, etc, they take up valuable time. Police interviewing, fingerprinting, replacing stolen items, and so on, have taken up valuable hours from my staff's days. Morale in our small office has also plummeted. Who wants to be first into an office that may have been plundered the night before? What is to be done about this sad and expensive trend in our society?

Yours faithfully,

ELIZABETH MILLS

Director, Research Into Ageing

London, EC1

29 April

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in