05 Oct Announcing Project Phoenix – joining up intelligence to tackle organised retail crime
We are delighted to share news of an exciting new partnership between Safer Business Network, Opal, policing’s national intelligence unit for serious and organised acquisitive crime, and retailers, to strengthen how intelligence on organised retail crime is shared and developed across London.
Organised retail crime crosses shops, boroughs and police force boundaries, with offenders often targeting multiple businesses and locations. Project Phoenix is designed to help connect that picture more effectively.
As part of the project, a Safer Business Network Intelligence Analyst has been seconded into Opal, creating a direct link between intelligence from businesses, our BCRPs and local partnerships and the national policing team tackling organised retail crime.
This will help us turn individual pieces of intelligence into a clearer picture. When information on an offender is shared with us, we can help verify it, identify whether the individual is already known across our partnerships or to police, and bring together intelligence from different businesses, areas and incidents.
Where there is a wider organised crime picture, we can refer that intelligence into Opal.
Information that may look isolated locally can then be connected with what is already known elsewhere, helping identify links between offenders, locations and organised crime groups. By joining local intelligence with information from other partners and policing, we can support more effective prevention, disruption and enforcement.
The need for this new approach is clear. In the first 18 months of Opal’s work through the Pegasus Partnership, 68% of national organised retail crime investigations had links to London.
Stephanie Coombes, Head of Intelligence at Opal, said: “Project Phoenix demonstrates the power of true collaboration, building upon the success of the Pegasus Partnership, by combining local partnerships with national policing capability. The project is already showing early results disrupting high-harm criminals and keeping our retail communities safe”.
Hannah Wadey, CEO of Safer Business Network, said: “Our members and partnerships already generate valuable intelligence every day. Project Phoenix gives us a much stronger way of joining that local picture with national policing, helping us identify links, build better intelligence and support action against those causing the most harm.”
This new project is supported by Nike, whose funding has helped turn this partnership into action.
Aimee Charlton, Director, Loss Prevention at Nike, said: “We have welcomed the opportunity to partner with Safer Business Network and Opal in recent months with this project. Retail crime remains a significant issue across the retail landscape, and we look forward to continuing to work with police, government and other retailers to bring forward innovative initiatives that have impact.”
We are really pleased to be taking this forward, and its success will depend on the intelligence shared by our partners and the strength of the partnerships behind it. That intelligence could be the piece that connects an offender, a series of incidents or a wider organised crime group.
We look forward to working with you as Project Phoenix develops, and to using the intelligence you share with us to help build a clearer picture of organised retail crime across London.