REDBRIDGE Police failed to ask for help from the public with any of the 1,965 crimes recorded in the borough in May.

The total number of appeals for the year numbers just 24 so far, most of which were in response to inquiries from the press and public.

With a clear-up rate of just 23 percent for May, some crime victims fear that evidence from potentially vital witnesses is going to waste.

Saiful Islam, who runs the Maybank mini-market in Maybank Road, South Woodford, was mugged as he left the underpass at Charlie Brown’s roundabout last September.

Police never arrested the robbers and closed the case in March.

Mr Islam said: “I’m not the only person to have been mugged there, I know of two or three other people who have been targeted, and it would help if the police issued an appeal for information.”

In March this year an elderly couple were tied up and beaten in their Woodford Green home by a gang of robbers posing as UPS delivery men.

While police leafleted motorists in the High Road, it took an appeal from the Guardian before a wider request for information was issued.

The husband, who does not want to be named, said: “I am surprised they didn’t come to you about what happened to us, surely it would have been useful for them to enlist your help.

“I do think anything that could help jog someone’s memory is useful.”

At the end of last year Detective Chief Inspector Stewart Hill, the borough’s newly appointed burglary chief, said: “Without a doubt we will be issuing appeals.

“I have a person on the burglary squad who will have a responsibility of liaising with the media.”

In the four months to April 1,023 residential burglaries were reported, but appeals were issued for help with just seven.

A spokeswoman for Redbridge Police said that appeals for information were now being put on the Metropolitan Police’s website, adding: “There haven't been many lately due to leave etc.

“However, our process is that we put them on the internet and you pick them up from there.”

Five appeals were uploaded in June.

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