Jewellery store robber charged
2.1 k views | Posted May 29, 2012 |
Police have arrested an alleged jewellery thief who stole $70,000 worth of jewellery over three months.
A 30-year-old man was charged with robbing five Perth-based jewellery stores, including four Shiels Jewellers stores and one Angus & Coote store.
The first robbery took place at Shiels in Spearwood on February 18 this year, when the alleged thief snatched several chains from a display before running out of the store. The man repeated this ham-fisted tactic at four other stores, often inspecting jewellery and then running away.
Shiels director Toby Bensimon credited his stores’ new video security system for identifying the alleged thief.
“Since upgrading our cameras, we now have exceptional footage of thieves’ faces,” he told Jeweller. “They are fantastic, our footage leaves no question as to the accused person’s identity.”
Bensimon also heaped praise on the West Australian Police’s efforts in finding and arresting the accused.
“We can’t praise the WA police enough, they have a virtually unblemished record of getting our stock returned and of arresting and imprisoning those who try to steal from us,” he added. “We have a good relationship with them and this is really an artifact of them being extremely effective and really pursuing criminals with vigilance.”
Bensimon said the robbery was not related to the string of hi-tech burglaries that took place earlier this year across Perth, including Shiels’ Mirrabooka store.
“This robbery was opportunistic and not very sophisticated,” he said. “Most thieves get caught eventually, stupid thieves get caught inevitably.”
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