The police unit unmasking shoplifting gangs ‘stealing millions’

“We’ve seen foreign nationals coming to the UK, maybe considering retail theft is an easy target, low risk, high reward.”

He said there was anecdotal evidence of criminals travelling to the UK for a couple of days at a time to carry out what he described as “shop theft tourism”.

Surrey Police worked with Opal to bring down a gang in 2024 that was responsible for stealing £200,000 from Tesco stores across the country.

“By having Opal in play now, we can see the collective impact across the country,” said Insp Chris Thoday.

“So we can get all of the offences from across the UK, deal with them as one job, and that results in tougher sentences in the courts.”

Stephanie Coombes, head of intelligence at Opal, said it was about enhancing cooperation between forces to target criminals operating in different parts of the country.

“Where we have individual offences, often another police force won’t know that another force is suffering the same offenders, so that collaborative response is much more effective,” she said.