An inquiry into a suspected series of burglaries is being held up because almost nothing in a haul recovered by police in Hastings can be linked to any crimes.
Tactical crime squad member Constable Warren Simpson said that, of about 40 items seized during a search last week, including flatscreen TVs and laptop computers, only two had been able to be traced by serial numbers.
"It seems there is still only a very small number of people who record their serial numbers." Few burglary and theft victims seemed to have marked their property or taken other steps to make ensure it could be identified.
"Without that we often can't categorically say that it is the property that has been stolen, and we can be left being unable to charge someone," he said.
"If people recorded all their serial numbers we would clean up a lot more than we do," he said. "We have got a system where we can enter the numbers and if it's already there we can trace where it came from straight away. If it's not, it stretches out the search time astronomically."
