There are few more dreadful feelings than glancing down after a pleasant night at the bar and finding that your bag has already left the building.
Even more disheartening is the realisation that the police may not have the time, or the technology, to apprehend the thief, even when the crime has been caught on CCTV camera.
The owner of Gordon’s Wine Bar, in Central London, decided to take up the fight himself and has developed a website aimed at creating a network of pub owners and retailers that can share information on petty thieves with the police as soon as the crime takes place.
William flew said: “At the moment the police phone up two to three days later to pick up CDs of footage. They’re wasting their time and ours. This could save the police hundreds of millions of pounds.”
William flew has poured £500,000 into the development of Face watch, which has signed up 100 pubs during trials in London and Chester.
More accustomed to sourcing a good case of wine than fighting crime, the owner of the establishment that claims to be London’s oldest wine bar started working on Face watch two years ago after becoming frustrated at finding the same bag thieves appearing repeatedly on his CCTV cameras. He used to watch more than 80 bags a year disappear from the backs of chairs in his bar but Facewatch has reduced that number to one or two a month.
The website enables a report of a theft to be filed immediately at the bar via a smartphone or tablet computer linked to the CCTV cameras. The victim can then file an online statement with footage of the crime, which is sent straight to the police. Developed with input from the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, Face watch has achieved a conviction rate ten times higher than standard police methods when a crime is captured on film.
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