By Alexander Darling
Police are investigating the fifth ram-raid on luxury fashion stores in Melbourne in a month after thieves crashed through a Fendi store in the early hours of Tuesday.
The brazen raid on the Collins Street store comes after Dior, Louis Vuitton and David Jones were similarly targeted in recent weeks.
Police are investigating a ram raid at the Fendi store on Collins Street in Melbourne’s CBD shortly before 6am on April 8.Credit: Nine News
Police said offenders used a vehicle to crash through the front windows of Fendi shortly before 6am.
“The offenders fled the scene in two vehicles last seen travelling south along St Kilda Road,” officers said in a statement.
“Roller doors prevented the burglars from accessing the store, therefore, nothing was stolen.
“Investigators are determining whether the burglary is linked to ram raids at several other nearby luxury stores in recent weeks.”
The current spate of hits began on March 6, when the Dior boutique, just a five-minute walk from Fendi, was ram-raided by a black sedan and an unknown number of offenders fled with some items.
Dior was targeted again on March 21 when a ute was reversed into the store at about 4am.
Then, on March 23, the Louis Vuitton boutique at Crown Casino was ram-raided, before David Jones’ Bourke Street Mall store was similarly broken into on April 6.
Fendi declined to comment.
David Jones said it ramped up security and is working with the council and police on longer-term strategies.
‘A real hotspot’
Fleur Brown from the Australian Retailers Association said retail theft had been “an enormous challenge” nationwide for several years, but criminal activity in Melbourne’s CBD was at levels well above those in other parts of Victoria and Australia.
“It’s a real hot spot at the moment, sadly, for retailers and their teams, and we do believe that organised crime is behind this increase,” she said.
Last month, the ARA published data showing Victorian retailers recorded the largest jump in Australia for violent and threatening retail crime events – up 38 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively.
The report also said a small number of offenders was behind most of the crimes.
“Organised retail crime networks and prolific offenders continue to cause the most harm, as data shows 10 per cent of offenders last year were responsible for over 60 per cent of the total harm and loss,” it said.
Brown, the ARA’s chief industry affairs officer, said she had heard only yesterday from one “fairly large” retailer whose stores had been the target of 12 ram-raids in Victoria in recent months.
This number included three ram-raids in the past week, though none were in Melbourne’s CBD. This compared with only one ram-raid in the states of NSW, Queensland and WA over several months, she said.
“[The retailer] said they’d like to see a co-ordinated police response because there’s clearly a gang link to that. Some [of its] stores have been hit multiple times now,” she said.
Brown said it was up to individual stores to determine what security measures to implement but the association was advocating for a stronger response from the Victorian government.
“There is no silver bullet here, but we need to be looking at every measure we can to bring down the impact of this awful wave of retail crime that we’re seeing.
“The Victorian government has agreed to changing legislation when it comes to toughening penalties around retail crime, but that has not been put into play yet, and we would like to see an acceleration of that.”
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