As part of its ‘Suspect It? Report It!’ campaign to combat the illegal trade in tobacco, Imperial Brands has launched a mobile app for its UK representatives to log reports by retailers of sales of illicit tobacco products in their areas, according to a betterReailing.com story.
After only two months of operation, the new system is said to have increased the reporting of illegal activities by about tenfold. The system operates through the SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Evaluation) problem-solving model, which is a common approach used by community policing agencies to identify and solve repeat crimes and community problems.
More than 300 reports had been filed so far in 2018.
Better Retailing said that the strategy had already paid off, with seven successful raids by police and trading standards officers as a result of the evidence passed on through the SARA system.
In addition, more than 50 Facebook advertisements offering illicit tobacco had been removed.
Imperial anti-illicit trade manager James Hall was quoted as telling Retail Express that with all of the data being recorded in one central digital database, Imperial’s Insights & Intelligence team could track and analyse both national and regional patterns much more robustly.
Illegal activity recorded
