A new police unit set up to combat soaring shoplifting rates has made 93 arrests and disrupted 28 organised crime groups responsible for £4m of thefts, police leaders said.
Five Romanian shoplifters have been deported as a result of Operation Pegasus, which aims to build a national intelligence picture to combat the epidemic.
Shoplifting offences are at their highest since records began in 2003, and it is estimated that the cost to retailers is £1.8bn a year.
A total of 469,788 offences were logged by forces in the year to June 2024, an increase of 29 per cent on the 365,173 recorded in the previous 12 months.
Pegasus, which is part-funded by major retailers, receives referrals from retailers and maps out offending across the country so repeat offenders who target stores in different force areas can be tracked.
Since it launched in May, police have identified 228 repeat offenders previously unknown to law enforcement.
The team has also identified 70 vehicles being used in organised retail crime.
So far, 32 of the 93 arrested offenders have appeared in court, including the five offenders who were sent back to Romania.
Police and crime commissioner for Sussex, Katy Bourne, who spearheaded the partnership between policing, retailers and the Home Office, said police forces should have been using this approach already.
‘My ambition was always that this should be business as usual for policing,’ she said.
Romanian Alexandru-Iulian Dima, 25, spent a year plundering £60,000 worth of goods from Boots stores in Scotland, England and Wales.
But his astonishing spree came to an end after South Wales Police received an intelligence package from the Pegasus partnership which indicated his next target was likely to be a store in Pontypridd.
The force mounted a sting operation and Boots staff used a special radio system to alert officers when they spotted the travelling thief.
Dima tried to flee but was arrested in a nearby carpark.
‘We looked at intel around his offending and chose the day we believed he’d come to town,’ PC Liam Noyce said.
‘Low and behold, we had the call from staff at Boots and we arrested him, bringing an end to the campaign of crime committed in towns and cities the length and breadth of the UK.’
Dima admitted 32 shoplifting offences and was jailed for four years in August.
He will be deported back to Romania when he reaches the end of his jail term.
‘It should never have got to this stage. Criminals are very effective at finding new avenues to commit crime and because this wasn’t on the radar it went unchecked and we have seen such shocking rates of offending.
‘But 28 gangs disrupted within seven months is pretty phenomenal.’
When asked whether 93 arrests is enough, chief constable Amanda Blakeman, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for acquisitive crime, responded: ‘It’s much, much more than that, in terms of the totality, it’s just 93 arrests from the organised groups that we’ve been able to map in the work that we’ve been doing with Pegasus.’
Offenders deliberately target different geographical areas and shops to try to avoid detection, police believe.
Ms Blakeman said ‘a huge range’ of people are involved in the crime, including members of organised gangs and people with alcohol and drug addictions.
‘We see a proportion of shoplifting, shop theft, being driven by organised crime,’ she added.
‘We also see a proportion of it being driven by offenders who are perhaps alcohol or drug dependent, and we also see some of it by people who are first time entrants.’
Ms Bourne said the next phase of tackling the crisis would be to track the items stolen by organised gangs to determine who is reselling them and running the operation.
Anyone buying surprisingly cheap items at this time of year not from retailers should be suspicious of where the goods have come from, Ms Blakeman added.
‘We’re asking the community to think about when they buy something, especially at this time of year, if it isn’t from the retailer and it seems incredibly cheap, it probably has got a background that you should be suspicious of and not purchase it,’ she said.
Paul Gerrard, director of campaigns and public affairs for the Co-op, said the retailer has seen the difference that the crackdown is making.
He added: ‘As a community-based retailer we know working in partnership with the police is how we can continue to tackle retail crime together – neither business nor police can solve this alone.
‘Co-op turned a spotlight on the involvement of organised criminality driving the increase in retail crime and our commitment to local stores and investing to make our communities safer places which can thrive and prosper remains a priority.’