Policing central intelligence team Opal has identified 152 individuals linked to organised retail crime in the three months since opening up referrals from police forces and retailers.
Opal is funded by Pegasus Partnership, a business and policing partnership set up in October 2023 by Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Katy Bourne, to improve the way retailers are able to share intelligence with policing.
A dedicated team within Opal now collates intelligence referrals to create a comprehensive national picture of organised retail crime offending.
The team analyses the referrals received, looking for opportunities to identify offenders and map offending patterns where individuals are targeting multiple police force areas.
A package will then be collated and shared with the most appropriate police force to progress the investigation and take action against offenders.
In the first three months since taking referrals, Opal also facilitated more than 23 arrests of high harm offenders and has supported 47 businesses and organisations, impacting 45 police forces.
The team received a total of 86 referrals from police forces, retailers and organisations.
One individual was recently sentenced to four years in prison after stealing over £55,000 worth of goods from different Boots stores across Wales. Opal’s work identified his pattern of offending which impacted a number of force areas and South Wales Police then progressed the investigation.
Another offender was sentenced to 16 months in prison for offences totalling over £33,000 across “at least 16 police forces”.
“Several more investigations are in the pipeline with arrests of offenders responsible for further tens of thousands of pounds worth of thefts,” National Police Cheifs’ Council reported.
Stephanie Coombes head of intelligence at Opal explained that Opal has been carrying out this role for other crime types for a number of years and has seen significant successes from having a national overview of what’s happening in the organised crime world.
“As we’ve seen, organised crime groups may be targeting one retailer using the same tactics across multiple regions and without a national team to bring together that information, we could have several police forces each looking into the same group. Our role is vital in centralising intelligence, building strong evidence packages and then working with the relevant force/s to deal with these high harm offenders.”
Opal’s work can be as light touch as putting CCTV images through the Police National Database to identify an individual or as extensive as building a detailed intelligence package of offending across multiple areas and retailers but either way it’s proving extremely effective.
“For far too long these groups have been damaging retailers and communities with thefts reaching hundreds of thousands of pounds and we are now quite literally ensuring they have nowhere to hide,” Coombes added.
Sussex PCC Katy Bourne commented: “Retailers, shopworkers and customers will be pleased to see the results of this unique collaboration between the retail sector and police. Over the past two years, retailers and police business crime leads had been calling for a more co-ordinated approach that shared information about known offenders and suspects and their patterns of behaviour and movements.”
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