A CRIME fighting team has told how they ended up tackling a trio of alleged thieves on their lunch break while cops took over a half an hour to arrive.
Shocking video shows the group capturing the alleged thugs as they threw £3,000 of shopping into their car in a Tesco car park in Waltham Abbey, Essex, yesterday.
Video shows alleged shoplifters packing up their cars
David McKelveyThey allegedly stole £3,000 worth of goods[/caption]
Cops took a half an hour while TM-Eye’s men detained two people
Nick Obank – The SunYoucef Mokhtari and Adam Barnard, members of the TM-Eye private security group[/caption]
The clip sees the trio hastily shoving groceries from a shopping trolley before jumping into the black BMW.
But before they drove away, a group of men were seen storming the vehicle and demanded the gang get out of the car.
Now The Sun can reveal the men are members of TM-Eye, a private investigating force made up of former police detectives.
The investigators had been on their lunch break from a training day when they spotted the looters.
The team’s CEO David McKelvey told The Sun: “They were heading to a cafe nearby when they stumbled upon three men looting Tesco.
“They saw what was happening and had literally just done the training so they intervened and detained two of the suspects. The third suspect managed to get away.
“They then called the police but they took 35 minutes to turn up.
“It was just a case of the right place, right time for our team. It was just happening directly in front of them. This isn’t even an area that we police.
“This was a day away from the beat for our detectives who then stumbled upon this.”
Cops arrested two of the men, aged 17 and 27, on suspicion of theft but they have since been released on conditional bail.
Mr McKelvey believes his team are more effective than cops – who fail to deter shoplifters from offending.
He explained: “We took all the witness statements, we secured the CCTV, we all wrote statements and handed it all over to police.
“The police, apart from arresting them, didn’t do any enquiries at all at the time.”
It comes as new figures revealed a shocking increase in violence directed towards frontline employees.
Across the sector, attacks have doubled in the last six years, costing stores more than £950 million in 2022.
And the British Retail Consortium claims cops rarely turn up when incidents are reported.
A recent survey found episodes of violence and abuse against retail workers increased from 450 a day in 2019 to more than 850 a day last year.
Staff report being sworn at, subjected to racial or sexual insults, physically threatened, spat on and subjected to physical violence.
Shoplifting costs firms nearly £1 billion a year and officers currently fail to attend more than two-thirds of serious retail crimes.
This was an increase of 35 per cent on the same period in 2022 and its highest ever levels.
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Blakesley, of Essex Police said: “We’re acutely aware of the impact theft has on our businesses and we work extremely hard, first and foremost, to respond to incidents when they happen and make arrests and, secondly, to ensure businesses are supported by our dedicated business crime team when they feel they would benefit from that independent advice.
“In this case, officers from our community policing team arrived quickly to make arrests and we thank all members of the public who reported the incident to us.”
Nick Obank – The SunYoucef and Adam’s firm has a 100 per cent conviction rate[/caption]
Detectives from TM-Eye stopped them from leaving Tesco
David McKelveyTM-Eye detained two men while cops arrived[/caption]
David McKelveyPolice arrested two men[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
