UK’s dedicated organised crime unit to begin retailer training

A new team of the UK’s policing intelligence unit for organised crime, Opal, is set to roll out training for retailers and police forces to better understand organised retail crime groups.

Through the initiative, the unit is hoping to gather, scope and analyse information about such groups from a number of different sources in a bid to identify and tackle the issue which it said was responsible for a large portion of retail crime.

Via virtual sessions taking place throughout April, the national team, which is being funded by the Pegasus partnership introduced in 2023, is aiming to support retailers and police forces in understanding Opal’s role and how to report intelligence to then be analysed.

In a release, Stephanie Coombes, head of intelligence at Opal, noted that the unit wants to centralise this information and build up a strong evidence package to deal with these “high harm offenders”.

Coombes continued: “We need to stress that Opal’s service does not replace reporting incidents to your local police force, it is a route for sharing information and intelligence packages and one of the key requirements for making a referral is having a crime number for the related incidents.

“We want to make it clear and straightforward for retailers, businesses, organisations and police forces to share information with us and the training sessions are an important element in achieving this.”