Luxury watch thefts down after Met goes undercover

The Met Police has used undercover "victim" officers to catch robbers attempting to steal luxury watches in central London.

Cdr for Intelligence Ben Russell, said two operations in 2022 and 2023 led to watch robbery reductions in and around Westminster.

The work came after 300 luxury watches with a total value of £4m were stolen between April and September 2022.

Cdr Russell said 27 men have been charged with offences.

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Two operations carried out in late 2022 and 2023 across South Kensington, Chelsea, Soho and Mayfair saw officers deployed as potential targets wearing expensive watch brands.

Opportunistic criminals who tried robbing the watches in the street were apprehended by other undercover officers nearby, with both operations leading to 21 convictions to date.

'Waiting for victims'

Cdr Russell said that the robbers were in groups of young men, mainly in their 20s and 30s, "waiting for victims" by hanging around outside bars and clubs between 23:00 and 04:00 on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

The robbers targeted luxury Swiss brands such as Rolex and Patek Philippe, which retain a high value in second-hand markets.

"The suspects would tend to offer access to sex workers or drugs before taking the victims to side streets or approaching them from behind, before carrying out the robbery," Cdr Russell said.

Katya Hills, managing director of The Watch Register, with two recovered watches

In the past five years, 29,000 watches have been reported stolen to the Met, with one in five of those thefts involving violence, a Freedom of Information request by database The Watch Register found.

The company operates a global database of lost and stolen watches.

Managing director Katya Hills said: "London is very much a hotspot. Over half of the thefts in the UK occur in London.

"That is where we see the most violent, opportunistic street robberies on owners.

"This has been a growing issue that we've seen over the last 10 to 15 years or so.

"Particularly in the last three years since Covid, there has been a serious increase in watch crime."

Cdr Ben Russell said the number of watch robberies in the boroughs in the summer of 2023 was half that of the previous year

Cdr Russell said the operations were about "preventing crime in certain locations in a precise way" and praised the "immense professionalism and dedication" of the officers involved.

He said that the first operation ran from October 2022 to December 2022 and resulted in a 28% reduction in watch robberies across the three boroughs.

And the second operation, which ran from March 2023 to October 2023, reduced watch robberies by 16% in the same three boroughs, he said.

Cdr Russell added: "If we compare summer 2022 before the operation to summer 2023, we can see the number of robberies cross Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham was halved."

Emmanuel Odunlami was killed by a gang of watch robbers

The force has charged 27 men after the two undercover operations, with 21 being convicted and 14 handed custodial sentences.

He added that he would not tell people not to wear watches but advised those intent on doing so to be aware of their surroundings, get insurance and take a photograph of their possession.

A gang of four robbers are due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey next month after Emmanuel Odunlami, 32, was killed for his fake designer watch in May 2022.

The music manager was stabbed to death in the City of London after he was seen wearing a Patek Philippe Nautilus watch which, if real, was worth between £90,000 and £300,000.

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