Sting Operations

The HammersmithLondon Business Improvement District recently worked with the Broadway Safer Neighbourhood Team on an operation to examine the methods used by pickpockets and bag dippers in the town centre. Bag dipping is an ongoing problem in the town centre and often involves belongings being stolen from a victim whilst the bag is nearby or even on their person whilst they are distracted or oblivious. The dippers are very quick, experienced and highly skilled at committing these crimes so the BID is continuing to work with the SNT to stamp out this problem and so far 23 individuals have been arrested and charged with a total of 43 offences.

Many of the incidents occur in licensed premises so several pubs were chosen to host undercover police officers posing as regular patrons. The covert officers used decoy handbags fitted with GPS tracking devices which could be tracked by nearby officers with surveillance outside the premises. The idea was for the officers bags to be taken and then tracked, where police could catch the dippers red handed and arrest them. Unfortunately for the operation, the officers were recognised by another patron in the pub and so no arrests were made. However a lot of valuable intelligence was gathered such as ideal locations, timing, creating an attractive target etc. More operations of this kind can be expected in the near future.