Detectives have arrested nine people in connection with the audacious theft of a safety deposit box vault in London’s Hatton Garden jewellery district.
The arrests came after 200 officers raided 12 addresses across London and Kent on Tuesday.
Police said the men arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to burgle were aged between 48 and 76 and that they had recovered a large amount of “high-value” property from properties raided. The arrests came after police using covert tactics to identify possible suspects.
They said they were confident some of the property recovered in the raids, which took place at about 10.30am, came from Hatton Garden.
One of the addresses being searched was an £800,000 property in Dartford, Kent. According to a planning application and the electoral roll, Paul Reader was registered as living at the address.
A resident from a nearby roadsaid Reader was a widower who used to sell cars from his drive.
The heist happened over the Easter weekend. The gang drilled through a thick concrete wall then rifled through 72 secure boxes believed to contain millions of pounds’ worth of cash, jewels and other valuables.
Tuesday morning’s raids were staged by Scotland Yard’s flying squad – its elite branch devoted to high-value robberies and other armed crime – with people arrested in Enfield, north London; east London and Dartford.
Police said: “A number of large bags containing significant amounts of high-value property have been recovered from one address. Officers are confident these are items stolen during the burglary.”
All those arrested were taken to a London police station as searches at the addresses continued.
In announcing the arrests, police apologised for failing to attend the Hatton Garden premises despite an alarm having been triggered while the gang were drilling into the vault. The blunder led to criticism that has clearly stung the top echelons of the Metropolitan police.
Commander Peter Spindler said: “At times we’ve been portrayed as if we have acted like Keystone Cops but I want to reassure you that, in the finest traditions of Scotland Yard, these detectives have done their utmost to bring justice to the victims of this callous crime.
“They’ve worked tirelessly and relentlessly. They’ve put their lives on hold over the last six or seven weeks to make sure that justice is served. They’ve exemplified the finest attributes of Scotland Yard detectives.”
Addressing criticism of why officers did not respond to the alarm, Spindler said the Met’s call-handling procedures were not followed and that lessons needed to be learned. “Our normal procedures would have resulted in police attending the scene and we apologise that this did not happen,” he said.
“In this case, the owners had been notified by the alarm company and a security guard attended the building but saw nothing more than our officers would have done had they been deployed. We are working closely with the alarm industry to improve the call handling and response processes at both ends to ensure nothing like this happens again.
“A more detailed investigation into the defeat of the alarm system at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd is ongoing and we will share the lessons learned with the business community in due course.”
Some inside the police questioned whether detectives would be able to gain much intelligence to arrest suspects, given the decline over the past decades in such “old school” crime and cuts to the flying squad.
However, Scotland Yard will be buoyed by the squad’s role in the arrests and the apparent recovery of stolen property.
The gang left behind tools, including drills, crowbars and angle-grinders used to force the boxes open. Officers have been trying to find out why only 72 of 999 boxes were opened.
