Asylum link to Tube theft

The number of pickpocketing crimes on the Tube has been slashed in half after three families of asylum seekers were targeted by transport police officers, new figures have revealed today.

The offences were cut last month to a year-on-year figure of 5,035 after last year's equivalent of 10,626 - the highest amount recorded in the past 10 years.

Blame for the sharp increase in pickpocketing was apportioned to an influx of disadvantaged refugees from Eastern Europe, many of them children or claiming to be children.

An extra 40 officers were drafted in to help the British Transport Police with its battle to fight the pickpockets.

Detective Chief Inspector Mark Smith, who was in charge of running Operation Farrow, said: "It was very difficult to pin down the people carrying out these offences.

"There were continual problems of identification, so prosecution was problematic, even when there was strong evidence."

Officers were sent out to the gateway stations in the East End - where the pickpockets got on the Underground - and followed them into central London both covertly and openly.

Stop-and-search operations were conducted, offenders were arrested as soon as their crimes were spotted being committed, and homes were visited in search of those wanted for offences.

A Joint Strategy Group was set up to help plan the operation, with representatives from the Metropolitan police, immigration and probation services - as well as social services and child protection teams. Mr Smith said this group was crucial to the operation's success.

He said: "We took in children at risk. We found youngsters, apparently unaccompanied by adults, with large sums of money in their pockets and close to live rails.

"We sought to have children taken into care where their crimes were not prevented by responsible adults, and to fast-track asylum adjudications. Where adult asylum seekers were implicated in crimes, we sought their detention until their application was heard.

"We achieved a substantial cut in the number of offences by a combination of increased resources and a planned strategy.

"By the spring of this year we noticed that some were beginning to drift back. But, in the main, they don't commit crime on the Underground these days."

Some of the principal offenders apparently found their practices so hampered that they left the London area, some moving to the west or east Midlands. But many more moved across the Channel to Belgium and France.

The scale of the current success rate can be measured against statistics showing that, in the past 12 years, only once have Tube pickpocketing offences dropped below the 5,000 mark.

Chief Superintendent Steve Hotson, BTP Area Commander, said: "If the current downward trend is maintained, by the end of the year, we could see a record low figure for pickpocketing offences, which affect more people directly than any other crime on the Underground."