Sydney’s Jewellery Thieves To Be Branded With Store-Specific DNA


Jewellery stores must be a tempting target for thieves; by their very nature there’s lots of high priced goods on display pretty much all the time. Angus & Coote’s employing a new high-tech weapon in the fight against snatch-and-grab thieves — spraying them with custom DNA.

Stores used to protect their goods with ink sacs that’d burst all over the hands of those with straying fingers (does anyone do that any more?), but the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Angus & Coote store in Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall is taking a more high tech approach. It’s employing a special DNA-based spray that soaks criminals as they flee the store. Ultraviolet light will then show up the tell-tale helixes for a period of up to two weeks, and the Australian developers of the product, Adelaide-based DNA Security Solutions claim it can’t be scrubbed off. The spray’s apparently a big hit in Adelaide with more than 400 stores using it — or at least putting up signs that say they are; in the case of the Angus & Coote store in Sydney, just having a sign up informing would-be thieves that the doors are spray-trapped has apparently dropped the in-store crime rate to zero.
[SMH]


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