Crack squad of cops will wage war on shoplifters with new intel unit funded by Tesco & Sainsbury’s swooping on thieves
A NEW specialist national police squad with go to war on shoplifters with the unit getting funds from high street chains to target the thieves.
It comes as Britain has been hit by a violent shoplifting epidemic with store owners urging the government and police to take action.
The squad of intelligence analysts will be tasked to identify the organised criminal gangs and treat shoplifting as a “high-harm” crime on a par with robbery, burglary and fraud.
It’s thought organised criminal gangs are behind a 37 per cent rise in shoplifting in a year.
Those retail outlets funding the scheme include Tesco, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, Co-op, Waitrose and Next who are each putting in £60,000 to what has been dubbed Project Pegasus.
Under the initiative, cops and retailers around the UK will pool their intelligence to target repeat offenders.
The move is part of a wider crackdown on shoplifting which is due to be announced by ministers and police chiefs over the next fortnight.
Katy Bourne, the police and crime commissioner for Sussex and the national lead for business and retail crime, said gangs had been able to avoid justice due to a lack of a co-ordinated approach.
She cited one example where two brothers fronted a gang that had stolen £500,000 of goods over two-and-a-half years, covering 15 different police force areas.
Bourne said they had been able to get away with their crimes because “forces only deal with crimes in their patches”.
Policing minister Chris Philp is today expected to reveal more details about the crackdown on shoplifters, according to a Telegraph report.
Project Pegasus will form part of Opal, the national police intelligence unit for organised acquisitive crime.
Previously, Opal had focused on “high-harm and cross-border” robbery, burglary, car crime, robbery, heritage and cultural property crime, metal and infrastructure crime and plant and agricultural thefts, but not shoplifting.
Startling crime figures lay bare the anarchic crime wave blighting the nation’s high streets.
Police recorded 339,206 shoplifting incidents in the 12 months to March, yet the British Retail Consortium estimates the total number of retail thefts to be close to eight million.
Just 48,218 shoplifting cases recorded by the police, a derisory 14 per cent, resulted in a charge.
And 183,450 investigations – 54 per cent – were closed without a suspect being identified.
The BRC say retail theft rose by 26 per cent in England and Wales last year.
Police do not even turn up to more than two-thirds of retail crimes.
According to the BRC, incidents of violence and abuse against store workers almost doubled from more than 450 per day in 2019-20 to more than 850 last year.
Last month, Philp insisted cops must investigate every single shoplifting crime where there is CCTV evidence, even if the goods are worth less than £200.
The minister said: “I expect a zero-tolerance approach to this criminality.”
And Home Secretary Suella Braverman said police should investigate all thefts as part of a crime crackdown.