“WANTED”, screams the poster above a picture of the actor Robbie Coltrane: “Active Burglar in this Neighborhood”.

Police in New Zealand issued the leaflet after a spate of burglaries in Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city — though they concede that the Cracker and Harry Potter star has not turned to crime on the other side of the world.

New Zealand law bans photographs of young offenders from being published, so officers decided that Coltrane was the next best thing.

“Robbie Coltrane is not the burglar but imagine him aged 16 with lank greasy hair and you have the picture,” the leaflet states.

It says that the wanted burglar “is 16 years old, lives locally, travels by bicycle and burgles houses in your street. He will break windows to gain entry and ransack the property, targeting electronic items, cash and jewellery”. Coltrane, it should be pointed out, is 58, lives in Stirlingshire, and is rather too comfortably proportioned to climb through the average window.

He has also been appointed OBE and played Rubeus Hagrid in all five Harry Potter films, which renders it unnecessary for him to augment his income by creeping out at night with a hooped jumper and bag marked “Swag”.

The leaflet, which has been pushed through letterboxes in central Christchurch, explains: “Because of the Children and Young Persons Act 1989, police cannot show you a picture of the 16-year-old burglar operating in your neighbourhood.”

Sergeant Phil Dean, one of the officers who came up with the campaign, said: “It’s a provocative thing to get people to read our crime prevention information.”

Not all residents were impressed. “I am wondering what Robbie Coltrane would look like as a 16-year-old,” one told a local newspaper. “I am also wondering how he could get through the window of my house.”

But a middle-aged man said: “I think the leaflet is very clever. It got round the law and alerted us to what is going on in our neighbourhood.”

Christchurch, a peaceful city of 350,000 people, is not one of the world’s crime hotspots. Even by New Zealand standards it is quiet. But fear of crime is running high after a series of highly publicised attacks.

Politicians have advocated a range of responses to stem the crime wave, focusing on sentencing reform, licensing laws and family policy, though until now no one had advocated the deployment of celebrity lookalikes. Pat Creasy, of the area’s Neighbourhood Support group, said: “I think Mr Coltrane would think it was a bit of a hoot. I’m sure he would be fully supportive of it.”

Coltrane was not aware that his image was being used to fight crime. His agent had no comment, saying that the actor was in the United States, where he is believed to be filming.

He is unlikely to be concerned about the possibility of mistaken identity. When Coltrane was the same age as the wanted burglar he was a pupil at Glenalmond College, a school in Perth & Kinross, sometimes described as the Eton of Scotland.

While there, he played rugby for Scotland schoolboys, was head of the debating society, became a prefect and won an art prize.

The Scottish star might, however, be irked by one aspect of the police campaign: the leaflet describes him as English.

Altered images

— In February, Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni sued Ryanair for using their image without their consent. Ms Bruni was pictured saying: “With Ryanair, all my family can attend my wedding.” The court awarded her €60,000 and Mr Sarkozy €1

— Brenda Song, a star of Disney Channel’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, took legal action against an advertising company this year after her image was used without her consent to advertise adult escort services in LA Weekly

— Dustin Hoffman sued Los Angeles magazine for $5 million in 1997 after it printed a computer-generated image of him in an evening dress and heels

— Lindsay Lohan's mugshot from her arrest for a suspected traffic offence was used without her consent in an advert for ignition interlock devices intended to prevent drink-driving

— In 2004 David Bedford, the former 10,000m record holder, complained that two runners used in ads for the directory inquiries service 118 118 had stolen his image, down to his droopy moustache

Source: Times Archive

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