SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: The secret indicators a pub thief is set to thieve your bag: Mail joins undercover police staff – and returned laptops to drinkers BEFORE they even realised they might been robbed!

Inspector Dan Green doesn’t appear to be a City of London policeman. He is dressed for an afternoon on the seashore or, perhaps, a track pageant, in Saucony trainers, a couple of snazzy military blue shorts, a short-sleeved striped blouse and a baseball cap. 

That’s as a result of he’s undercover, in conjunction with a dozen different police, roaming the streets of the Square Mile on a sunny Thursday night in May.

It is 5pm and already many of the pubs are heaving, with place of work employees spilling onto the pavements clutching their pints of Guinness or faded ale, a lot of them striking their paintings luggage casually at their ft. And for this reason Green and his staff are on accountability – to catch bag snatchers.

Bags make nice goals for criminals, particularly within the monetary district of London, the place the beginning wage for company legal professionals elderly simply 24 is now an eye-popping £150,000.

‘Everyone’s going to have a computer, everybody’s going to have almost definitely their very own telephone and a piece telephone, almost definitely a pleasant Samsung or iPhone,’ Green explains. ‘There’s more likely to be some great headphones in there, automotive keys.’

He leads the City’s Proactive Acquisitive Crime Team (PACT), a gaggle of cops who move out as soon as each and every few weeks, attempting to find thieves.

While the unit was once arrange two years in the past to take on telephone snatchers, final 12 months its center of attention shifted to incorporate the pernicious crime of bag robbery.

The Daily Mail has been given permission to spend the night with Green and his staff to look their experimental manner in motion. Because, slightly than watch for a criminal offense to be dedicated after which investigating it, they mill about with crowds of after-work revellers, actively in search of criminals as they move about their paintings, within the hope of catching them within the act.

Some other people can have restricted sympathy for well-paid and well-oiled City employees having their paintings laptops stolen. But, as Green says, bag thieves are infrequently opportunistic: ‘All the criminals involved will be doing all sorts of crimes. They are invariably involved in drugs and stolen goods as well.’

Just final month, Green’s staff had stuck a snatcher who, when his flat was once raided, had 20 laptops.

How do you see them? ‘Body language, behaviour. They stand out because if you and I are walking down the street, we would be going somewhere,’ he says. ‘These guys – there’s one thing other. They’re no longer strolling with a goal. Their eyes are frequently taking a look round, they’re taking a look at other people.’

It turns into instantly obvious why ‘baggers’, as Green calls them, like to paintings within the City. We get started off in his automotive, a Ford Focus, using down Farringdon Road, a large thoroughfare that runs from Smithfield meat marketplace right down to St Paul’s Cathedral. In only a 200-yard stretch there aren’t any fewer than six pubs or wine bars, every with drinkers spilled out at the pavement.

The City of London is a curious nook of Britain – a mixture of beautiful Wren church buildings, medieval alleyways and a great quantity of glass skyscrapers, a brand new one going up apparently each and every month. But, whilst most effective 8,600 other people reside right here, 678,000 travel on a daily basis to paintings within the banks, regulation corporations and consultancy places of work. This explains the abundance of pubs and wine bars – greater than 1,000 authorized premises, in line with Green – which might be wealthy pickings for criminals. 

He explains that almost all thieves, just like the place of work employees they prey on, travel into the City: ‘Criminals are creatures of habit and they will come back to pubs they know and like.’

The many delivery hubs within the City assist criminals simply up to commuters – letting them break out seize. Liverpool Street station is now the busiest railway station in the United Kingdom on account of the outlet of the Elizabeth Line, with 94.5million other people coming into and exiting the station in 2023/24, in line with the Office of Rail and Road.

We park on a quiet aspect side road after which get out to stroll. The Mail photographer and I dangle again, whilst Green and his colleague, PC Monika Furmanska, get started prowling the pavements. PACT paintings in teams of 2 or 3 cops, all dressed in commonplace garments, with Green coordinating them by the use of radio and a hidden earpiece. 

They walk between pubs, however don’t move into them, with Green explaining it has a tendency to be more uncomplicated to identify criminals when they’re at the transfer slightly than when they’re status nonetheless. Also, it’s more uncomplicated to thieve a bag from a pavement than inside of a pub itself.

By now, it’s 6.30pm. The crowds are getting noisier, with consumers bringing out bottles of rosé in wine coolers from the bar.

Plain garments City of London cops lead a suspect away

We stroll right down to Ludgate Circus and up Fleet Street. There’s all of sudden a flurry of process. Green and Furmanska get started working down an aspect side road in opposition to The Harrow pub, whilst two different undercover police arrive on Santander motorcycles as back-up. It is a false alarm. They had won a record that two males, one among them dressed in an ear pod, have been appearing suspiciously. After the police searched their luggage, they have been discovered to have taken not anything.

‘They nearly always work in twos or threes, with one acting as a lookout. The single ear pod is often a giveaway,’ Green says, explaining criminals keep up a correspondence with every different by means of the usage of Bluetooth headphones.

We transfer directly to Watling Street, a part of an outdated Roman street that traversed the traditional capital and is now a pedestrianised thoroughfare. It is so heaving with drinkers that I’ve to boost my voice to be heard, even outdoor. It is now 8.15pm; the Core Bar has attracted a specifically huge choice of more youthful drinkers, most commonly of their early 20s, due to its Happy Hour be offering of £7 steins – a double pint.

I chat to Max and Rob, each 21-year-old economics scholars on paintings placements, one at client items large Unilever and one on the Bank of England. They, like such a lot of, are status loosely round a pile in their luggage, ingesting their steins of lager. Are they anxious about robbery? ‘You’d hope one among us would realize if any person got here and nicked one,’ says Max. ‘But after four hours of drinking, who knows?’

Green indicators to me to go back to the automobile. He has heard from a colleague {that a} pub has reported a bag grab close to London Bridge. I pay attention the message over the radio: ‘IC one male in flat cap; IC four female in bucket hat.’ IC stands for identification code, with every quantity akin to an ethnicity – one being white, 4 being Asian – a short-hand for when police are in a hurry. ‘They’ll put on any form of headgear that is helping hide their identification,’ Green says, explaining that they regularly stay a watch out on somebody dressed in a hat. ‘We’re interested in hats.’

But ahead of we will get to London Bridge, every other name comes thru. Green ‘blue lights’ down Cannon Street – turning at the emergency lighting included into his Ford Focus – as we weave thru visitors at 45mph to get to the scene.

The record over the radio is sketchy, however we arrive at Tower Hill tube station to look two males being led out of the station by means of some simple garments police.

Both are international nationals, elderly 36 and 28. The older one, as he’s being handcuffed and put into Green’s automotive, has excellent sufficient English to mention to the officer: ‘I’ll spit to your f***ing face.’

Transport for London group of workers in Tower Hill tube station had observed them appearing suspiciously, making an attempt to make use of quite a lot of debit playing cards to get during the price tag boundaries. The group of workers had referred to as the City of London Police, informing them that the suspects have been ready at the platform for an underground educate and there have been 4 mins till the following tube.

Another suspect is taken  away by means of an officer after being arrested for bag snatching

Two of Green’s officials, across the nook, rushed to the station and one officer instantly noticed that one of the most suspects were thinking about a prior bag grab. He recognised him from CCTV again in February. Arrests have been being made as we arrived.

One of them had a black bag containing not anything however two laptops. Another had a black Lululemon backpack containing a pockets in conjunction with different private pieces that didn’t belong to him.

The suspects are taken again to Bishopsgate Police station in conjunction with the baggage. The police get to paintings on making an attempt to determine the place and from whom the baggage had been snatched.

The bag with the laptops gives few clues, but if they open one among them it has no longer been absolutely close down, so it says: ‘Henry’s computer’.

Inside the Lululemon bag there are extra clues, together with a handwritten card to ‘Daisy’ from one among her kindly neighbours, welcoming her to her new block of residences. It contains his phone quantity. The police name the neighbour and give an explanation for they’re looking to pay money for Daisy, the landlord of a stolen bag; he gladly provides them her quantity. The police then name Daisy, 30.

It’s now 9.30pm. Daisy takes up the tale: ‘I was still at the pub, the Running Horse, in Aldgate and the police called me, and I thought it was my colleague playing a prank on me at first. But then they asked if I was with a “Henry” and that his laptop had been taken and I realised it was for real.’

The police had – accurately – presumed they have been colleagues ingesting in combination. Both paintings for a big advertising company within sight.

As ‘Thursday is the new Friday’, in line with Henry, a gaggle of about 40 colleagues all went to the Running Horse at 5pm. It’s a contemporary pub at the flooring flooring of an place of work construction, however has a small outdoor space with a patch of grass.

‘We go there because it’s any such suntrap,’ says Henry. ‘It was a glorious sunny evening. And, as usual, we put our bags onto the floor into one big pile.’

He was once status simply two yards from the pile when the police referred to as Daisy. She tells him the scoop his computer has been stolen, however he may see his bag nonetheless within the pile. It’s most effective when he is going to test, that he discovers any person has undone a clip on his bag, put their hand in and brought out his computer.

‘It was obviously a bit of shock,’ he says. His subsequent emotion was once ‘embarrassment’ that it were taken from below his nostril. ‘I can’t imagine it’s took place to me. How can I be so careless?’

Daisy says she was once very anxious a couple of private ownership inside of her bag: a Burberry shawl that belonged to her grandfather, who died a 12 months and part in the past. ‘It’s only a shawl, and it’s moth-eaten, and I’ve one million recollections of him, however it made me really feel helpless on the concept it could had been tossed right into a bin or bought on eBay for a tenner.’

Both of them say they have been then relieved and overjoyed to find the police no longer most effective had recovered their pieces, however have been going to return to the pub to go back the baggage and to take statements.

Daisy says: ‘I would have been devastated and very stressed to find my bag had been stolen. But I was impressed at the swiftness of the police and their willingness to come to reunite us with our stuff.’

She provides, alternatively, that it’s every other reminder that dwelling in London, you might be by no means a long way from a felony. ‘It’s actually unhappy. I really like London, I feel it’s the most efficient town on the earth. Only final month I ran the marathon and it was once London at its perfect.

‘But it’s actually, actually terrible that you find yourself no longer trusting somebody. What a tragic, unhappy strategy to reside.’

Between the beginning of the 12 months and the tip of April, 247 thefts from authorized premises within the City of London were reported. This works out at two an afternoon – down from the overall of 313 reported in the similar duration final 12 months. It without a doubt means that the PACT unit is creating a distinction. Old-fashioned policing, with officials out in the street, can assist scale back crime.

But as Daisy and Henry’s revel in presentations, anywhere there’s a bag containing a treasured computer or telephone, there may be nearly without a doubt a felony no longer a long way in the back of.