SUCCESSFUL car crime-cutting measures in Blackpool have won two Blackpool police officers a prize in a prestigious national award scheme.

PC Andy Smith and PC Wade Dooley won second place in the TILLEY award, run by the Home Office Crime Prevention Unit, for the success of Operation Atlas, a two-year crime reduction project which ran in the town from October 1998 to December 2000.

The operation involved both covert, plain clothes work and high visibility of uniformed officers in car parks. Car crime fell during the operation by up to 26 per cent

Measures included upgrades to security on local authority car parks, education of the public through publicity campaigns, CCTV cameras around vehicle crime hotspots and new scrolling message boards on the roads into Blackpool, flashing crime prevention messages.

The prize is part-funding to attend an international police problem-solving conference in San Diego, California, later this year.

PC Smith, who will be accepting the prize along with PC Dooley on behalf of Western Division at a conference in Leicestershire in September, said: "We are very pleased the operation has been so successful.

"There was a 70 per cent reduction in crime in municipal car parks in the town and 26 per cent throughout the division in all car crime -- including stealing of cars and stealing from cars. The reductions speak for themselves. But the public must remember not to leave valuables in cars."