New World Halswell Work With the Christchurch Police Eagle to Stop a 1.5 Month Retail Crime Spree

We are always blown away by what our community of Retail and Police partners are able to achieve together. We chatted to Miles Mangos, Store Manager at New World Halswell about how they worked with the Police Eagle helicopter team to stop a repeat offender on a two-month crime spree. This is a great example of how Retail Crime Intelligence can empower your store teams to prevent serious crime.

96% of her offending value occurred with 1.5 months before she was arrested

What happened?

A prolific offender was recognised instore at New World Halswell, with a trolley full of meat
The store team continued to observe the offender and her accomplice, as they attempted to sneak cuts of meat from the trolley, into reusable shopping bag
The offenders eventually realise they have been spotted and attempt to ditch product
Another store team member saw the offenders flee and called the Police
The Police Eagle helicopter was called upon to assist in locating the offenders who were hiding in a nearby pub
Both offenders attempted to flee on foot, one hopping on a bus and the other hiding in a nearby park
The helicopter led Police units on the ground to the bus and then also located the offender hiding in the park.
‍

“Ground units eventually managed to track down one of them who was hiding in a local park and then they pulled a bus over and found the other one. They were wanted for thousands of dollars of other events so it was a great win.”

- Miles Mangos, New World Halswell

From here, Police were quickly able to detain both offenders and remand them in custody. The repeat offender involved is now facing 20 charges (half of those related to retail crime) and as a result, hasn’t been active across Auror since.

Miles, what do you think the key was to your success in this situation?

My advice to other stores is that you need to make the time to put all the detail on Auror as quickly as possible. That way you will more likely end up with Police being able to prosecute sooner, rather than spending time going round all the stores and collecting all the evidence. Our team are making a conscious effort to add in all the detail to our Auror events. Using the report to police function has made it a million times easier for us to get the information to police quickly and it saved them time too!
We’ve got a great community here in Christchurch, people are always jumping on to assist in naming unknown offenders. We didn’t know this person’s name when she offended in the previous incident but someone helped link her up and that's when we saw the huge scale of her offending. Auror has been a fantastic tool to help us build a bigger picture of what these offenders are doing. Police don’t see these guys as one-off offenders anymore; they see the bigger picture.

“We’re excited to see our stores have more and more success in preventing prolific offenders from offending in our stores - they’re able to keep each other safe, whilst making it harder for these people to target us. It’s the collaboration within this community that really moves the needle and helps get great results like this”

Glen Forrester, Loss Prevention Manager - Foodstuffs South Island