Starting from October 2022 and running until March 2023, Station to Station and inStreatham BIDs will be piloting a crime prevention scheme with an organisation called TM-Eye. They will be working with us to provide the chain stores and their employees with the resources required to help tackle the ongoing issue of shoplifting and anti-social behaviour.
At the beginning of the scheme, TM-Eye will run a month of covert surveillance with two trained undercover operatives across both BID areas. These officers will gather intelligence to target the 10-15 ‘prolific’ shoplifters who account for the vast majority of crimes on the high street. Where possible, these officers will also apprehend these suspects and with store agreement, begin the process of private prosecutions or banning orders.
TM-Eye was set up in 2007 by Ex Metropolitan senior detective David McEveley and offers a prevention, apprehension and prosecution solution to tackle so called ‘low level’ crime. A similar scheme was initiated in August 2022 with Make it Ealing BID which is already showing excellent results.
TM-Eye will build a network of the store managers and security guards on our high street to deliver the following services:
- training staff in dealing with shoplifters, anti-social behaviour and gathering evidence
- collecting evidence and informing the police accordingly through their information sharing partnership
- making private prosecutions with the help of chain store management
- issuing trespass notices to prolific offenders, with any additional offence carried out charged with the more serious offence of burglary
- ensuring the administration tasks associated with recording offences are done correctly
- creating a communication group for the shops to share information and offer live advice and support
We are confident that this scheme will make our high street unfavourable to these 10-15 prolific shoplifters that ‘work’ the BID area. If the pilot goes well, we will look for further funding to continue it.
