Tackling Organised Crime on High Streets - and Key Public Event on 4th December!

Dear All

I thought I would send an update on some of the work we continue to do on combating more organised crime on our high streets across the Borough. A couple of weeks ago we carried out Operation Zoridon across all of London. I was the operational lead and also oversaw activity here in Bromley. Please do google the operation if you'd like to know more, as we received a lot of very positive coverage in the media which we hope will act as a deterrent to premises engaged in this kind of offending.

In essence, we started to target the premises who are accepting and taking in goods stolen by prolific shoplifters. These premises are encouraging and enabling this type of crime, many of you will have seen widespread reporting of rising retail crime all over the country. In this operation we deployed to over 120 stores all across London, seeing dozens of arrests, huge amounts of believed stolen property seized, and a number of premises closed by police and partners including Trading Standards and the London Fire Brigade to stop them contributing to offending in the future.

We want this to be a clear message that this kind of offending will not be tolerated. We have seen some promising signs, with retail crime finally seeing some reductions in Bromley, currently just over 20% reduction. This only goes some way to addressing the rises in recent times so we cannot let up our focus on this. This operation was the next phase of our work which initially focussed on prolific offenders under Operation Kelleher (once again please google this if you'd like to know more!)

This offending is not about solely retail crime, with those involved engaged in a wide range of other crime types, and by focussing on this we can have an impact on so much more.

Finally - we are holding a key public event for the launch of the “New Met for London 2” strategy, with the Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley attending to talk through the plans. This will be held at Bromley Football Club, Thursday 4th December 2025. We will share more details soon but please hold the date if you would like to come and we will send an Eventbrite registration through very soon. This will give you a chance to hear about the Met's plans moving forward to continue to deliver the progress needed, and will provide you a chance to ask the Commissioner, and your local teams your questions directly.

Kind regards,

Luke Baldock
Neighbourhood Superintendent

Bromley Borough