The Rise of Sophisticated Shoplifting Tactics in the UK
The little girl was probably no more than seven but already had a keen sense of the value of the pink Chanel handbag that was on display in a boutique in Surrey. Security footage captured her eyeing the £6,000 bag like a coveted toy, then signaling to a woman wearing a flowery headscarf who was pretending to be interested in dresses.
Neither could believe their luck. Unlike the other handbags, this one was unsecured by a security tag and cable. In a clever move, the child gave the bag a wiggle to get the adult’s attention. The woman then scooped it up and placed it behind a plant, out of sight from the staff.
Other thieves – two women and another child – appeared and for the next two minutes the gang pretended to admire dresses pulled from racks. Then they grouped together, as if around a rugby ball, and the woman with the flowery headscarf, in a maneuver that belies her sturdy frame, swooped down and the Chanel bag disappeared beneath her voluminous black robes.
Such is their audacity that she and the little girl, wearing a T-shirt bearing the word 'love' in capitals, continued browsing with the rest of the gang for another four minutes before coolly taking their leave.
By the time the staff of Phoenix Style in the genteel town of Cobham realized what had happened, the thieves were speeding away in a people carrier. Using children as decoys to distract shop staff is not a new tactic, but the boutique's owner, Paige Mengers, says all-female gangs featuring under-tens are on the rise and are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
She says the pink Chanel bag heist is a case in point, indicating the influence of organized criminals who see high-value leather goods as a bigger target than jewels or cash. As handbags sell for record prices at auction – the late singer Jane Birkin's Hermès bag fetched £7.4 million last summer – prices are rising in boutiques, and second-hand bags are gaining value as collectors' items.
Mrs Mengers, a champion of small retailers, is at the front line of the shoplifting epidemic sweeping Britain – her shops are targeted weekly – and her thoughts merit serious consideration. She has held numerous meetings with politicians over the issue and once confronted Britain's most senior police officer on a live radio show after his force failed to show the 'slightest interest' in investigating a raid on her business.
In addition to the Cobham shop, she owns a boutique 13 miles away in Wimbledon Village, south-west London, which has a panic alarm linked to a police station. In a recent raid, a gang entered the shop and stole designer bags worth thousands after deploying a secret weapon – a girl of around eight who cradled a doll to disarm staff.
'It's relentless,' says Mrs Mengers, who has spent a fortune fortifying both shops. 'Every week we find ourselves repelling attempts to steal from us. These children are not accomplices, they are victims. They are being drawn into criminal behaviour before they are even old enough to understand what crime means.'
Looking through some of the CCTV footage of incidents is deeply disturbing. 'Adults using toddlers and primary-school children as cover or decoys to steal from my shops should be unthinkable in a civilised country,' she said.
Last week, mobs of youths ran riots in the capital's streets and in shops, forcing retailers to barricade their doors and prompting Marks & Spencer to demand that the Government and London Mayor Sadiq Khan get a grip on crime and finally tackle the scourge of shoplifting.
The High Street retailer said the Mayor and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood should come clean about 'the true scale and impact' of shoplifting, calling for more transparency around crime statistics. And on Saturday, Lord Walker of Broxton, the head of supermarket chain Iceland, said security staff working in shops should be allowed to carry truncheons and pepper sprays.
'We call it shoplifting, which sounds like a cheeky bit of pilfering, but actually we should just call it out for what it is, which is violent crime,' he said.
Mrs Mengers would agree. And she too has some hard words for the mayor. 'As a shopkeeper and a mother, I would like to ask him – at what point does this stop being solely a policing issue and become a moral failure of the capital itself?' she asks. 'What does this say about London today, and what is the mayor going to do to stop it? I feel strongly that this is an issue that deserves real debate and accountability.'
In a case highlighted by The Mail on Sunday last year, two men targeted both her shops in the space of 24 hours, using wire cutters to slice through cables and steal four bags worth more than £17,000 in total. 'After that we began locking the doors and letting customers in one at a time,' she says. 'If some look suspicious we might tell them it's by appointment only.' This precaution is at once depressing and necessary. Mrs Mengers says it has thwarted untold thefts, but still the fight goes on.
Later this year she will install an automatic door and intercom 'which will allow us to buzz in customers without having to keep locking and unlocking the door'. Like the shop's priciest vintage wares, beat bobbies are rarities in Cobham, so Mrs Mengers relies on a private security firm to advise staff on crime prevention. 'The safety of staff is a primary concern,' she says. 'It is a tragic indictment of our times that when they come to work they are thinking not only of the job at hand but of crime and whether the next customer will try to rob us.'