Deadline: It’s not just the owner who pays when a luxury car is stolen

Just like a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a tornado on the other side of the world, here’s how a machete-wielding teenager in Brighton can affect the price of car insurance in Dandenong.

The rising tide of car thefts is a headache for insurance companies, who have no option but to pass it on to the rest of us in higher premiums.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with their weekly dose of scallywag scuttlebutt.

Hot cars burn insurers

The rising tide of car thefts, especially of prestige cars, is a headache for insurance companies which have no option but to pass it on to the rest of us in higher premiums.

Insiders tell us that insurers mostly pay out on stolen cars and are reluctant to repair or “send back” a stolen car to its original owner because of the increased risk of mechanical failure, among other problems.

Depending on the condition of the stolen car, of course, it ends up on the second-hand market or on the scrap heap.

It seems that insured stolen cars get a “sharps test” from Sharps Australia to make sure there are no needles or drug paraphernalia or drug residue left in them.

Recently, some insurers have started sending stolen cars to mechanics to do a check so they can then auction them with a “bill of health” to cut their losses a little.

The costs of Melbourne’s surge in car thefts is shared by the entire community.

There is some other interesting information on stolen cars that are usually held in towing company’s yards pending police examination.

The story goes that brazen thieves will break into such a yard and torch the said cars to hide evidence. This, in turn, can damage other cars parked nearby — what the military calls collateral damage.

In this case, of course, it’s damage to the taxpayer’s pocket, as the police are held responsible for the fire damage inflicted by thieves too lazy, too stupid or too scared to torch them when they ditch them in the street.

Paying out on car thief arson isn’t ideal for a police budget already stretched too many ways.

Ex-cop’s Hollywood nights

Americans are known for their hospitality, as a former Victoria Police officer is able to confirm.

Our man travelled to California recently where some locals living near his accommodation in West Hollywood invited him and a mate over for a catch-up one night.

Thinking that was mighty neighbourly of them, the Melburnians lobbed for the evening, envisaging a stars and bars night of spare ribs and Budweiser.

When he arrived, they found the Yanks had really laid it on — but more in a mind-altering sense than what they’d expected.

There were lines of cocaine ready to go on a plate as well as joints and lashings of ketamine for those who fancied an after-dinner anaesthetic.

“They were watching the Burning Man*, which is, apparently, some kind of music festival for tweakers*,” the visitor tells us.

He didn’t have the heart to put a dampener on the night by explaining his career background. But he did grab a snap of the smorgasbord.

The ex cop was swept up in the surprise West Hollywood drug party.

For the record, the bemused Australians did a Clinton and stated they did not partake.

Our source said it was staggering to see such quantities of drugs being passed around like party snacks, given the cost of such a spread here.

“Mexico to the US is a lot closer than here,” he said.

* The Burning Man, according to Deadline’s dedicated research department, is “a week-long, large-scale desert event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance held annually in the western United States.”

*Tweaker: “person who illicitly uses methamphetamine and especially crystal meth.”

Thieves beware!

A decorated former policeman is the latest to join the avalanche of crime victims in Victoria.

This cop is not somebody you’d want to mess with but thieves didn’t know that when they broke into his vehicle in the below-ground car park of an inner-city apartment complex.

They can probably count themselves lucky the burly, crook-hating owner was asleep upstairs because concepts of second chances and restorative justice may not have entered his head.

“I was watching them (on CCTV) the next day. I wanted to kill those people. There would have been blood in the streets,” he said, using a figure of speech deliberately exaggerated for effect. Or maybe not.

The ex-member says there was forensic evidence left at the scene and he’s hoping for excellent results from an extremely thorough police investigation.

“There’ll be an interested party sitting in court,” he said.

He has made absolutely no mention of any intention to follow the accused back to their own local mini-version of Burning Man festival for tweakers in Narre Warren, Doveton or Dandy.

Nugent in the driver’s seat

Spotted out and about at the recent Australian Grand Prix was new Chief Commissioner Rick Nugent.

The interim Victoria Police boss was seen at pit lane on the Albert Park circuit with his chief-of-staff, Commander Wayne Newman.

Mr Nugent, who has been in the role for a month, will be hoping for a much smoother run in the driver’s seat than the former incumbent copped from “friends” in Spring St.

The previous number one with the Victoria Police team, Shane Patton, was run off the track by the State Government after it had, just 13 days earlier, told him he was in pole position to keep the job.

It has been said before, and quite often in this very column: a policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

Bent gun metal not bent copper

One potential headache for the top cop is the ongoing mystery of what happens to some of the many firearms and ammunition that police are obliged to seize each year.

Sometimes the seized guns and ammo are from crooks, of course. Other times they come from small-time gun dealers or licensed shooters who have got behind on the paperwork, or from the families of shooters who have died, or from people who have found forgotten guns in the ceiling or under the floor or in a shed while cleaning up or renovating.

And sometimes, as revealed in the Sunday Herald Sun two weeks ago, a legitimate shooter’s firearms and ammunition are seized automatically because of a legal blind spot: the apparently automatic issue of apprehended violence orders, commonly called AVOs, on sometimes flimsy pretexts.

That happened to veteran sporting shooter, grandfather, retired Ford and GMH engineer and all-round nice old guy Sam Mahfoud three years ago. This was when a plausible chancer with an exaggerated financial grievance persuaded bored police she was “in fear” of the respectable senior citizen she’d met through her own family’s involvement in target shooting.

The number of reasons police seize guns are as many and varied as the types of firearms seized.

The truth was she was abusing the process to attempt to extort $9000 she insisted she was “owed” in commission for a land sale she hadn’t actually carried out. The complainant wasn’t much of an estate agent but a wizard at selling her story to the Broadmeadows police who issued the AVO which, as she knew it would, automatically got poor Sam Mahfoud’s guns and ammo seized.

That is exactly what happened. The worst problem being that after Sam had the AVO torn up by a magistrate, he claims, he got back about only a third of his valuable stock of ammunition. The rest had vanished from Ballarat police station, a loss now the subject of a civil court action.

This loss triggered the memory of a western Victorian farmer’s son who tells Deadline about handing in various firearms his war veteran father had collected.

The last of these was a valuable .22 calibre pistol which the farmer’s son felt was far too inviting to be left in working order. Before taking it to a certain police station during an amnesty, he put the pistol in a vice and bent the barrel in a U shape.

“What did you do that for?” asked a policeman when handed the bent and useless pistol. “You know they all go into the scrap bin to be melted down.”

No problem, replied the citizen. “At least this way we know it can never be fired again.”

End of discussion.