Undercover police wear luxury watches to catch thieves
Police have released CCTV footage of officers in an undercover operation against thieves responsible for stealing luxury watches worth £4 million ($5.1 million) in central London.
The officers posed as members of the public wearing luxury watches and were targeted by gang members.
The thieves engaged the undercover officers in conversation and then attempted to rip the timepieces from their wrists. They were then arrested.
New research showed the total value of stolen watches passed £1 billion for the first time last year.
The covert operations were carried out in the Soho area of London, which accounts for about 40 per cent of all watch robberies in the UK capital and has experienced an increase in the thefts. Ben Russell, the Met Police’s commander for intelligence, described the officers as “courageous, calm under pressure and uniquely dedicated to the task”.
Common tactics used by the robbers see them lead or follow their victims to a quiet side street before grabbing them from behind and trying to steal their watch from their wrist.
Three hundred luxury watches, with a combined value of about £4 million, were stolen in the central London boroughs of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea between April and September 2022.
Officers from the Met Covert Policing Command and Central London Robbery teams set up two operations, which ran from October to December 2022 and March to October last year in Soho and Westminster.
The operations resulted in 31 arrests in a year, which has led to 21 convictions. Of those, 14 robbers have so far been sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Mr Russell said the Met used intelligence and data to identify locations and times when such crimes were taking place and sent undercover officers as part of a “precision-based approach to fighting crime”.
“We could only put undercover officers into the area if we knew exactly when and where to deploy them,” he said.
“With this information around where these offences were taking place and what time, we brought in our covert teams.”
Mr Russell would not comment on what brand of watches the officers were wearing but said “the criminals know how to spot a fake so they know what they’re looking for”.
He said the visibility of the watches and ease by which they can be valued makes them a more attractive target for robbers compared to other items.
“There’s also something about looking for someone who is on their own at 2am, where you are unlikely to find someone wearing high-value jewellery,” he said.
Mr Russell advised people wearing luxury watches to be wary and to conceal their timepieces.
He also encouraged owners to have watches photographed, insured and registered with specialist databases.
“I think the main thing is we don’t want people fighting back because we don’t want people to be seriously hurt or injured,” he said.