Fagin-style gangs recruiting child thieves to pick pockets and shoplift
- Gang leaders making £120,000 a year
Fagin-style gangs have started recruiting child thieves as young as five to pick pockets and shoplift for them.
Earning £120,000 a year, they have been targeting shops across the country by recruiting the youngsters because they are too young to face prosecution.
Many of the children have been smuggled into the UK from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, but some are English and travel from the capital to other parts of the UK to carry out the crime.
Training: Two women show a young boy the art of shoplifting
They are then taken on 'daytrips' to towns and cities where they are shown what to steal.
Because they are under ten, the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales (12 in Scotland), they cannot be prosecuted even if they are caught red-handed.
Police in Peterborough have become so fed up with the practice that they have released video footage that shows a gang in operation.
Nick Constanti, a PCSO who has been looking into the crime, said: 'They go along to the shops, take the goods, take them back to the person and then go out again.
'We have some CCTV of a child standing next to his mother and her pointing at which fragrance she wanted and she then walks away, he picks it up and puts it in her handbag.
'There are some innocent parents and children do pick things up they shouldn't in shops, but we could see her telling him what to do on the CCTV.
The two women would point out items they want to steal and the boy would then grab them, concealing them in a backpack
'Footage will show them pointing out the products to the children and that is enough to prosecute the person.'
Europol says each child can earn the gangs up to £120,000 a year and there were at least four operating in Peterbroough alone between December 2009 and August last year.
While most of the time the thieves take small items that can be easily concealed in a backpack, some have become brazen.
PC Grahame Robinson, from Cambridgeshire Police, said: 'We have seen footage where a child is pushing a trolley out of a supermarket with a flat screen TV in it.
'This kid cannot have lifted the TV never mind get it into the trolley.'
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection admitted foreign gangs using children as pick-pockets and thieves are well established within the UK.
A spokesman said: 'Using a child for criminal purposes is exploitation and is a form of child abuse.
'Law enforcement agencies, social workers and local councils are working together not only to make awareness and highlight the issue but work together to safeguard these children and put in place measures necessary to protect them.
'Exploitation by gangs trafficking children is well-established but these kind of child gangs are a relatively new phenomenon.'
The CCTV footage handed to Cambridgeshire Constabulary shows two young girls using their younger brother to steal clothes from Asda supermarket.
Police linked the case to eight other thefts in Peterborough and two sisters have been caught and given community punishment.
The children can earn up to £120,000 a year for the gangs
Photographs released by police show members of a 15-strong gang of Romanian children who repeatedly targeted the city between December 2009 and August 2010.
In one shocking case security footage captured two kids, aged eight and six-years-old, piling stolen produce into their mum's backpack in Boots.
Other footage shows an adult pointing out to a child which items she wanted him to steal for her.
Police have also identified a gang of English children travelling from London who target Peterborough once every few months.
Detectives believe the gang send young children shoplifting in pharmacies and clothes shops across Britain.
Last October police smashed an alleged child trafficking ring thought to be forcing dozens of Romanian children to beg and steal on London's streets.
In raids in officers found more than 100 children living at 16 addresses in east London, including a three-year-old, who gangs used for pick-pocketing, shoplifting sprees and prostitution.
It is believed the proceeds fund lavish lifestyles in Romania.
The operation was part of a joint British and Romanian investigation into Fagin-type child gangs operating in the UK. Operation Golf was launched after a surge in petty street crime in the West End in 2006
Children as young as six were found to be engaged in distraction muggings stealing handbags and phones in coffee shops and bars as well as cash machine thefts.
At the time, Chief Inspector Colin Carswell, of Operation Golf, said: 'These children are exploited by gangs and in some cases their own parents. Many parents are told by the gang they can earn money if they give up their child to be taken abroad.
'The gangs loan them money. This is at an extremely high interest rate, and it can take many years to pay off gangs, with increasing numbers of the children and even entire families becoming entrapped as debt slaves.'
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