Prolific thieves have targeted London’s lawless West End as shoplifters have been caught stealing thousands of pounds worth of goods, including designer clothes, iPhones and board games.
Over the past week in the West End, a board game thief was caught 10 minutes after stealing as part of a £1,300 crime spree, while a masked gang was cuffed moments after stealing £100,000 of Apple products from a phone shop.
And a rampant thief who stole £9,000 from stores in Covent Garden throughout February and March was caught by bobbies on the beat last month.
The shoplifting crisis has seemed to reach boiling point in the West End as the Metropolitan Police has been forced to take action in a bid to contain the shameless thefts.
In an attempted crackdown, the number of officers policing the district will increase by more than 50 per cent following a spate of brazen thefts.
Knife crime and theft is at record levels in the city – and the force has faced accusations of failing to take the challenge seriously or to be tackling it head on, all while trying to manage with an ever–shrinking budget.
Board game thief Omar Innis, 32, was spotted by West End district coppers carrying a large number of board games and toys on July 25.
Officers had been speaking to shop owners in the area, who had informed them that board game thefts had been on the rise.
Prolific board game thief Omar Innis, 32, was spotted by West End district coppers carrying a large number of board games and toys on July 25
It was the seventh time he had struck in a month and a half, nicking £1,300 of goods in total from the same shop in Covent Garden
The Camden man is now behind bars after pleading guilty to thefts and receiving a 26–week jail sentence
Innis was ‘acting suspiciously’, the Met said – and it emerged he had stolen the games just 10 minutes before.
In fact, it was the seventh time he had struck in a month and a half, nicking £1,300 of goods in total from the same shop in Covent Garden.
The Camden man is now behind bars after pleading guilty to thefts and receiving a 26–week jail sentence.
Similarly, a group of men who allegedly stormed an O2 phone shop on Tottenham Court Road and made off with £100,000 of Apple products were cornered minutes later in Cranleigh Street, just under a mile away.
Three men aged 25, 24 and 18 who were suspected of entering the store in balaclavas on July 24 and 7.17pm and making off with goods.
Police bodycam footage shows one man getting arrested on a nearby street as he his told he ‘matches a description of males who have gone into an O2 store and stolen some phones’.
Officers found around 100 iPhones and a number of Apple Watches in a car, along with a large machete.
The men were arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary and remain in custody today.
Police bodycam footage shows one man getting arrested on a nearby street as he his told he ‘matches a description of males who have gone into an O2 store and stolen some phones’
A stash of iPhones can then be seen in the footwell of the back seat of a car, which was pulled over by police on a nearby street
The footage also shows a large black machete being recovered from the car
In the West End’s shopping hub, Covent Garden, a rampant clothes thief was arrested in June after spending two months stealing £9,000 worth of high-end clothes.
Officers happened upon Zenith Lawrence, 33, a stone’s throw away in Phoenix Gardens, after he spent February and March pillaging a number of stores.
Already wanted for recall to prison, he was caught on camera wrenching clothes from rails and helping himself to jackets off the hangar.
Footage showed him downed on the ground beside a Lime bike after trying to flee from cops. He was wearing stolen clothes.
The arresting officer can be heard asking him: ‘Why did you try to run?’
His colleague notes: ‘Mate, this is from the dancewear store from round the corner.
‘Are you a little dancer?’
Lawrence was jailed for 28 days, fined, and banned from entering Westminster for three years.
In the West End’s shopping hub, Covent Garden, a rampant clothes thief was arrested in June after spending two months stealing £9,000 worth of high-end clothes
Officers happened upon Zenith Lawrence, 33, a stone’s throw away in Phoenix Gardens, after he spent February and March pillaging a number of stores
Footage showed him downed on the ground beside a Lime bike after trying to flee from cops. He was wearing stolen clothes
Since the pandemic, the Russia Ukraine conflict and soaring inflation, theft has soared in the UK, recently hitting the highest level ever seen.
Shoplifting has become an increasing nightmare for High Street shops, with only a tiny minority of offenders ever charged, as 530,643 offences were recorded in England and Wales in the year to March 2025 – the highest figure since records begun and up from 444,022 in the previous year.
The crisis is most acute in London, where the capital has recorded a shocking 50 per cent boom in shoplifting, up from 53,202 in 2023 to 80,041 last year.
Norman Brennan, a former police detective in London, said earlier this year that terrified shop staff had been left helpless to prevent crooks from brazenly ransacking their businesses.
The 65-year-old – who spent 31 years as a cop and was once stabbed in the chest by an armed burglar – said crippling cuts to policing, which have seen thousands of officers lost in recent years, had left forces stretched too thinly.
Problems reached a peak in August 2023 when West End stores were forced to lower their shutters and lock customers inside after large groups of mainly young men and teenagers responded to a call on TikTok to join an ‘Oxford Circus JD robbery’.
But the biggest issue in recent months has become phone snatching after 80,000 smartphones were reported stolen in London last year at a cost of £50million.
Today, Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the force was renewing its ‘laser–like focus’ on ensuring police officers are where they should be: out on the streets tackling crime.
In all, the Met has deployed 170 officers in areas of the capital worst for crime, including up to 80 in the West End, where shoplifters, phone thieves and so–called ‘Rolex rippers’ regularly target the rich and tourists.
The crisis is illustrated by sickening CCTV revealing thieves casually walking out of stores with armfuls of high-value goods.
Footage from a Waitrose store in London’s Notting Hill earlier this month showed two men leaving with a stash of steak and salmon while staff watched on – forbidden from doing anything due to company policy.
While, a Boots store on Baker Street was targeted by a man, who did not attempt to cover his face as he emptied shelves’ worth of goods into an M&S Food bag.
This happens two or three times a week, according to staff.
Many of the shoplifters appear to have no fear of the staff, or of the cameras.
In January, a gang of at least of eight hooded youths raided an Apple store in north London in a shocking daytime heist one Sunday afternoon.
A sea of shoppers, including parents with young children, could be seen dramatically fleeing the store as the mob ripped out expensive devices around them in a raid that took just 24 seconds.
Last year another pair of thieves were filmed calmly clearing the shelves in a north London Boots store just 200 yards from Chingford Police Station.
The men carried on impassively as a woman dialled 999 within earshot and pleaded for a police response, before both sauntered out.
And in May last year a suspected shoplifter was dragged into the storeroom at a Sainsbury’s in east London where staff appeared to give him a kicking.
But elsewhere, shops have been fighting back, with two brave security guards seen grappling with a shoplifter trying to steal bottles of fizzy drink from a Greggs in nearby Hammersmith.
As part of the Met’s clampdown, another 90 officers will be based in Brixton, Kingston, Ealing, Finsbury Park, Southwark and Spitalfields.
And the legendary Flying Squad – the elite unit specialising in tackling armed robbery and other serious violent crime – is being supplied with another 50 officers with extra cash from City Hall and the Home Office.
The Met’s move has been welcomed by Ros Morgan, chief executive of the Heart of London Business Alliance representing central London traders, and the boss of Boots.
‘With over 200 million visitors a year and a £50 billion contribution to the UK economy, keeping this district secure isn’t optional – it’s vital,’ Ms Morgan said.
Anthony Hemmerdinger, MD of the pharmacy chain – a regular target of shoplifters – added: ‘Retail theft alongside intimidation and abuse of our team members is unacceptable, so we welcome this additional support.’
Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (pictured) said the force was renewing its ‘laser–like focus’ on ensuring police officers are where they should be: out on the streets tackling crime
Riot squads will also be expanded, the Met says, to better police large–scale protests – coming after months of near–ceaseless protests by pro–Palestine and environmental activists.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said: ‘The Met is getting smaller but more capable.
‘We have a laser–like focus on ensuring our officers and staff are in roles where they can drive down crime on issues that matter the most to Londoners.
‘This is what the public expects of the police, which is why we are putting neighbourhood policing first, tackling the crimes that we know are impacting the public in the busiest areas, and making the capital’s streets safer.’
He added: ‘While our budget has decreased in real terms, we are using this additional funding from City Hall and Home Office productively to support our mission to take a targeted approach to tackling volume crime and bolster our specialist tactics to disrupt the criminal gangs who fuel anti–social behaviour, robbery and theft.’
The Met says neighbourhood crime is down 15 per cent in a matter of weeks compared to last year, with knife crime, burglary and robbery down, and more shoplifting cases being solved.
In the West End, violent crimes resulting in injury are down a quarter, the force says, and it is arresting 1,000 more criminals every month.
But the Met is trying to solve a rising number of crimes with an ever-dwindling resource.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan (pictured), blamed previous governments for the Met’s dwindling budget – despite the fact the most recent budget allocation was decided under Sir Keir Starmer
It is losing 1,700 number of officers and staff and its budget is smaller in real terms than in previous years.
Dedicated Royal Parks and schools policing roles have been scrapped, with officers being absorbed into local policing teams. But it says this means it can put more officers on the beat.
The Met also says it will use more live facial recognition to recognise individuals with existing warrants for arrest – a move that will likely prompt an outcry from civil liberties groups who are already opposed to what they say is an encroachment on human rights, including the right privacy.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, blamed previous governments for the Met’s dwindling budget – despite the fact the most recent budget allocation was decided under Sir Keir Starmer.
He said: ‘Despite years of austerity by the previous government, this is the latest example of the Met Police and I prioritising what Londoners want and delivering on our pledge to put high visibility policing at the heart of fighting crime and rebuilding community confidence and trust.’
