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OUTCOMES:
During 2024-2025:
A collaborative partnership between leading UK health and beauty retailer Boots and national police intelligence unit Opal is significantly disrupting organized crime groups using Auror.
In one of the latest high-profile cases, several participants of a crime group were arrested and convicted. This group was responsible for £264.6K in total investigation value across 78 Boots stores.
Their partnership, and the resulting outcomes, show the powerful impact of retailers and police working closely together and using collaborative technology to create safer communities.
The partnership began in 2023, when Boots established itself as a founding member of The Pegasus Partnership, and a year before Opal’s organized retail crime (ORC) team was officially formed. The Pegasus Partnership was set up to bring police and retailers together to address retail theft.
Since then, Boots has been a proactive partner, helping identify the people responsible for the greatest harm, sharing this intel into Opal, and working with police to address those high-harm offenders.
Meanwhile, Opal has worked closely with retailers, the police, and retail crime intelligence technology like Auror to identify ORC offending and develop intelligence to fuel investigations.
Boots CARE Operations Manager Phil Bance says Opal has been a great partner to retailers.
“They are the glue that brings the retailers and policing together to get results on the highest harm cross-force offenders.”
Over 12 months, Boots referred 12 cross-border investigations to Opal, all of which have resulted in disruption to crime activities.
From 2024 to 2025, Opal ORC has been involved with 15 operations which have impacted Boots. These operations involved 136 offenders. In the same time period, 42 arrests have been made. Up to £17K worth of Boots stock was recovered in this time.
In a recent Opal operation, 23 police forces were involved in investigating a series of crimes carried out across 78 Boots stores. These crime events were perpetrated by several people, with dot connections made on Auror revealing this group was responsible for £264.6K in total event value across 161 events.
One of the offenders was arrested when they stole £180 worth of products from one Boots store, after already stealing thousands worth of items from other Boots locations. This person was ultimately responsible for stealing over £9K in goods. Along with their accomplices, the offender was engaging in theft daily before they were eventually caught.
An accomplice received a two-year prison sentence after being found guilty of stealing £25K worth of cosmetics and perfumes across three Boots stores.
Ultimately, three members of the crime group were sentenced to a combined total of almost five years in prison.
"It is only through building out the investigation with evidence, understanding police and working with them in partnership that we can bring [high-harm people] to justice"
Phil Bance, Boots CARE Operations Manager
Opal and Boots use Auror’s Retail Crime Intelligence platform to help facilitate the development and distribution of intelligence.
The Boots team uses Auror to link crimes and People of Interest (POI), forming an investigation when there is enough quality evidence. They can quickly and easily upload CCTV footage, make witness statements and report new events involving POIs all on one platform. Opal is invited to collaborate on these investigations and use Auror as a shared source of high quality intelligence.
Boots’ Phil Bance says it is difficult to know the true extent of a person’s offending without the ability to connect the dots on Auror. The case against a POI becomes stronger when as much evidence on their crimes as possible can be aggregated.
“It’s why we have focused on [Auror’s Connect the Dots module to join] the dots brilliantly. If we do this well, we will always find the highest harm people as quickly as we can. It is only through building out the investigation with evidence, understanding police and working with them in partnership that we can bring [high-harm people] to justice.”
Phil says it’s clear the impact that using a retail crime intelligence platform is having on retail crime and violence in Boots stores.
“The outcomes we are achieving would not have been possible without Auror.”
On top of facilitating evidence gathering and investigations, Auror has also helped the Boots team better understand the risks in their stores, which ensures they are able to get the right level of investment to mitigate those risks.
Auror’s Direct to Police Reporting function has also helped team members feel safer and that they are contributing to safer store environments. Some comments from the team include:
“We feel safer and confident in the knowledge that together, we are making a difference.”
“You can see results happening and feel confident that when [the offenders] are caught, all the separate incidents are put together to make more charges.”
“I think it's bigger than Boots for a lot of the team too. It's like feeling we are contributing to society”
In addition to the success of Operation Argon, Boots has also experienced significant progress, including achieving 100 convictions since rolling out Auror in 2023.
Phil says this helps remove harmful individuals from stores for a good amount of time, reducing safety threats and loss, and improving morale.
“The belief these results have created means more people see the benefit of reporting crime and therefore, we see the fuller picture.”
A recent case saw an offender who shoplifted almost £120K worth of Boots products arrested. They were part of a crime group clearing Boots shelves across London and admitted to 30 counts of theft.
Earlier in 2025, Boots saw an aggressive offender sentenced to prison. This person was responsible for 32 reported events worth £38K in total loss. They were sentenced to 20 months in prison.
This outcome was a result of quality event reporting, with clear images, which helped the crime intelligence team to connect the dots on this person’s events. These dot connections built a compelling case for police to charge the person.
In 2024, a cross-country repeat offender linked to 34 events across the UK was sentenced to several years in prison. Retailers built a strong case for police through consistent and quality event reporting on Auror's platform, and it was thanks to the offender's vehicle details being recorded that police were finally able to find and arrest them.
This person was responsible for 34 events in Auror, worth over £61k. They have pleaded guilty to all the events and face four years in prison.
“The more partners we can engage with, the greater the understanding of the threat picture we have, and ultimately the better outcomes we can achieve collectively.”
Representative from Opal
When it comes to future crime prevention success, partnership and collaboration are vital.
Opal continues to build their engagement with retail partners and develop the feedback loop between retailers and police. They are also developing different tactics to disrupt ORC, including a new section of the team focused on the financial activities, hierarchy and structure, and disposal routes used by ORC offenders.
Opal’s Head of Intelligence Stephanie Coombes says the value of working together with retail partners can’t be overstated.
“The more partners we can engage with, the greater the understanding of the threat picture we have, and ultimately the better outcomes we can achieve collectively.”
Along with the right technology solutions, collaboration is just as highly valued by Boots. During a visit by the UK Home Secretary to Boots’ CCTV monitoring center, Boots Managing Director Anthony Hemmerdinger said:
“While we continue to invest significantly in schemes to deter and disrupt crime, including our state-of-the-art CCTV monitoring center and bodycams for our team members in stores, it is only through collaboration with Government, police forces, and local communities, that we can ensure high streets feel like welcoming and safe spaces for people to work, shop and visit, all the time."
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