Though several London thieves may have looked to snag a luxury watch during a late-night mugging, they got a whole lot more than they bargained for, landing a trip to jail after their victims turned out to be a pair of undercover cops.
On Wednesday, London’s Metropolitan Police headed to Twitter with a schadenfreude-filled look at one of their successful stings, sharing surveillance footage of two undercover officers nearly getting robbed in an effort to tackle crime rates in the city’s SoHo neighborhood.
Over the course of 7 months there has been a sharp rise in high-value watch robberies in central London worth £4 million.
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) January 17, 2024
Undercover officers set out patrolling major hotspots in Kensington and Chelsea, the West End and Mayfair to help people impacted by these robberies.
The… pic.twitter.com/uKXyMTK51f
The video may be lacking sound, yet it appears the thieves learned their lesson loud and clear, getting tackled to the ground after attempting to strip the watches off the plainclothes officers’ wrists.
“All offenders in this video have pleaded guilty, and have been convicted,” police partially captioned the clip.
Theives attempt to mug undercover police officers in the West End of London.
byu/ToronoRapture inPublicFreakout
While cops generally tend to be bastards (ACAB) it appears they actually hit the nail on the head with this one. As a result of these operations, which landed 31 arrests, 27 charges and 21 convictions, the rate of SoHo watch robberies fell 15.8 between two seven-month periods in 2022 and 2023, according to law enforcement.
So take it from these thwarted robbers — they may have not gotten the watches but they sure got time.
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