The private force tackling crime because police don't want to: Founder of security firm staffed by ex-Flying Squad cops says communities across their beat 'finally feel safe' as they hunt burglars and shoplifters when Met refuse to investigate

A former Scotland Yard detective who leads 'Britain's first private police force' says locals in the communities it patrols 'finally feel safe' thanks to his staff investigating and prosecuting cases of burglary and shoplifting ditched by the Met.

TM Eye consists of a crack team of former detectives with experience investigating major crimes including murder, terrorism and armed robbery. They are paid by households and businesses to patrol local areas and investigate crimes.

The company has now successfully brought to justice 'one-man crime wave' David Hanson, 44, who is the first burglar to be jailed following a private prosecution. 

Today, founder David McKelvey insisted the case 'wasn't complex' but an example of 'community policing' of the type British police forces used to be famed for. 

He told MailOnline: 'We have teams of bobbies and detectives on patrol constantly so they know all the prolific offenders. It was just a case of a detective seeing the CCTV and identifying the person who had committed the burglaries. 

'They then went out and found him very quickly and detained him. It's all about community policing - having people on the streets who know their communities and keep those communities safe. 

'Across our beat we're seeing reductions in crimes like shoplifting. The feedback we're getting from our communities is they finally feel safe. They know we'll be there in two minutes. But outside of our areas crime is booming.' 

Hanson, who had 105 previous convictions including 33 burglaries, broke into a M&S store in Streatham Hill, south London, to steal £500 of sirloin and T-bone steak as well as 20 bottles of prosecco.  

But despite the serial offender being caught in the act on CCTV and the store manager offering to hand this to police, the Met refused to investigate. 

Instead, the case was taken on by TM Eye. The company has already brought more than 280 shoplifters to justice, but this was the first time it had prosecuted a burglar. 

Officers studied the footage of Hanson breaking through a glass window of M&S before making off with the pricey goods and quickly recognised him as a well-known shoplifter. 

They then headed to one of his local 'haunts' before performing a citizen's arrest and getting him to admit the offence on their body-worn video - which was submitted to the court.

It led to Hanson being jailed for a year for a total of five offences. These included four burglaries and one assault on an M&S employee, as The Telegraph previously reported. 

Mr McKelvey said his colleagues targeted crimes that were often neglected by police, such as street robbers, pick-pockets and shoplifters, but were also targeting more serious offences - including aggravated burglary. 

This is a serious offence that covers burglary carried out with a weapon and has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. 

'We get lots of allegations from victims of crime on a daily basis where they feel let down by the police response,' Mr McKelvey said. 

'We are currently investigating a series of aggravated burglaries across north east London, Essex and Hertfordshire.' 

TM Eye employs 100 'bobbies', who wear police-like uniforms with red stab-proof vests, and 28 plain-clothes detectives who mingle with shoppers.

The Essex-based firm, which has worked with companies including Apple, Louis Vuitton, Mulberry and Fortnum & Mason, aims to catch criminals and then take them to court through private prosecutions brought by its own lawyers. 

Mr McKelvey said the company sought to work with police forces on crimes like shoplifting but often felt disappointed by the outcome.

'Unfortunately you get mixed responses from the police that vary almost from an hour to hour basis - some areas are absolutely brilliant but others aren't,' he said. 

'In this [Hanson's] case we had the suspect and admissions but police weren't going to anything. He was a one-man crime wave who had to be stopped.'

Towns across England are increasingly turning to private police forces to patrol their High Streets. In Cambridgeshire 50 villages have hired guards for their neighbourhoods while Sussex city of Chichester has also brought in private security for its businesses.

Previously, TM Eye officers were seen tackling a group of shoplifters outside Tesco as they tried to flee with electrical goods 'worth more than £3,000'. 

Last year, the firm successfully prosecuted Russians Marduaajevs, who stole more than £200  of meat from a shop in Tulse Hill, London. 

He was found guilty of two offences of burglary and one count of breaching a criminal order and will be sentenced at a later date.   

Other members of the company's investigations team include Barry Walker. 

According to a biography on TM Eye's website, he is a former Met Flying Squad member who also investigated major crimes including murder and terrorism. 

Meanwhile, Steve Hobbs was the senior investigating officer in more than 200 murder investigations and led the team responsible for gathering evidence used to prosecute 14 terrorists in the biggest 'super grass' trial in Northern Ireland's history.

Other colleagues have expertise in other areas including organised crime, trading standards and Internet offences. 

Some are employed to investigate murders when the victim's family was unhappy with the original police investigation, or where there has been a possible miscarriage of justice.  

Mr McKelvey, who left the Met in 2010, previously told MailOnline that a lack of trust in the police was one of the factors behind the high demand for his services.

'I think the problem at the moment is policing has become very reactive, so all they are doing is reporting and recording crime - they're not actually going out catching villains,' he said. 

'Police numbers in London are now higher than they've ever been. But you've got a very inexperienced workforce. Morale is not good - we recently put out an advert and had 14 police officers replying.

'Another factor is that officers are scared to stop people and arrest people. There's a palpable fear of doing something wrong or being perceived to have done something wrong.

'There are serious problems in policing at the moment. I hope as much as anyone else that they get resolved because it doesn't help anybody if they don't have the trust of the public.' 

The spread of private policing comes as the UK faces a shoplifting epidemic, with offences previously hitting a record high.

The number of shoplifting incidents recently hit the highest figure on record, with a total of 430,104 offences recorded by police in the year to December 2023, up by more than a third (37%) from 315,040 in the previous 12 months.

The figure is the highest since current records began in the year to March 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Retail bosses have accused ministers of allowing shoplifting to become effectively decriminalised, with many police forces failing to attend the majority of reports and failing to gather any evidence when they do.

Private police forces have become a more common site even outside the capital, with the historic market town of Kimbolton in Cambridgeshire hiring its own security after multiple houses were burgled in the space of a few weeks.

About 50 villages in the area also hired security guards for their neighbourhoods, with their services costing households about £35 a month. 

A security boss said his company, Shield, which is taking over security in Kimbolton and has dozens of other towns on its books, has seen the number of enquiries from residents, farmers and businesses increase by the day.

'There is just an increase in anti-social behaviour full stop: burglaries, damaging and stealing equipment, setting up cannabis factories, whatever it may be,' he told MailOnline last September.

'There is a hell of a lot of people even in villages that are frightened to go out after dark. Elderly people in particular are petrified to go out after dark.'

He said many of his customers have lost faith in the police, who are too overstretched to deal with minor incidents.

'The first thing police say is 'anybody injured' and they say no and so they don't come out.

'It's quite alarming, people are saying 'I had somebody in my garden, I called the police and they didn't turn up.'

'There seems to be a gap, during the dark hours police are struggling to cover all the minor incidents.'

'People want reassurance and they want people to be there. If someone calls us, we will respond to that, we will probably send a few cars out, maybe a dog handler and a drone straightaway and an arrest is made if it's an indictable offence.'

The security company has state of the art drones, thermal cameras, marked cars and dogs to try and deter crime and reassure residents in the communities it covers.

Having worked with a fleet of five vehicles for seven years, the security boss said the company has just ordered another two to cope with demand.

'We are even being asked to go out in daylight,' he said.

'A lot of the villagers know the villages don't get policed as they would like.

'When they are at work or go shopping in the day and their premises are left unattended they want to have a marked vehicle in the area.'

It is not just residents homes which are being targeted but also high street businesses, he said.

'We have a customer who is a pharmacist who has issues with anti-social behaviour every night, they'll set his alarm off and he lives in another county - it's an hour drive to get to his premises.'

He said farmers are also having to fork out 'tens of thousands' for damage to their machinery and fields.

'Criminals are using cutting equipment to cut through gates and padlocks - they are even using drones to do their surveillance in the day,' he warned.

In 2019, around 140 homeowners living in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, decided to pay £504-a-month for a team of guards to safeguard their homes three times a week. 

Members of the community connected through WhatsApp after they noticed a spike in the number of burglaries and car break-ins on the road.

Some 69 of the families opted to pay an extra £10-per-week for added security.

John Edkins, 67, and wife Janice, 61, put forward the idea to hire a team of guards from security firm Innovative Security Control.

Mrs Edkins said: 'Home break-ins and car thefts started happening every four or five days, and at any time of the day or night.

'Recently, residents had noticed a number of unknown cars driving up and the street.

'We felt like we were being watched, it made us scared to leave the house.'

Last year a community near Liverpool that was afraid of balaclava-wearing gangs of teens brought in their own reinforcement.

A father who lives in the area told the Liverpool Echo that they pay the security firm a monthly fee and are given access to a 24/7 hotline in case anything happens.

The firm would conduct three patrols during the day and three patrols during the night in return.

In Portsmouth volunteer 'vigilantes' have taken to patrolling their own city streets equipped with bodycams and stab-proof vests because their 'trust' with police has been 'broken' and crime has increased 'tenfold.'

Fed up with drug dealing, car thefts and other offences, Andy Kircher organised local residents to tackle crime because he believes there aren't enough officers on the beat.

Mr Kircher, who owns a CCTV company, spent £2,500 of his own money to buy protective gear for the volunteers in Portsmouth and local businesses have also donated money to the group.

Equipped with bodycams, high visibility jackets, stab-proof vests and radios, the volunteers roam their local areas at night and make reports to the police, even intervening when it is safe.

Mr Kircher claims crime has gone up 'tenfold' in recent years and insists his approach is now yielding results.

'The police have acted on the reports we have given them and have made arrests,' he said. 'Action is being taken.

'The police are responding where they can, but they can't be everywhere at once. I feel sorry for them.

'There are nowhere near enough officers on the beat overnight. Residents are worried. I want people to feel safe in their own homes.'

Mr Kircher said he will continue the patrols due to the amount of public support, with residents requesting patrols to cover their areas.