JUST BROKEN GLASS OR A SHATTERING CONSPIRACY?

Shops across London are repeatedly having their windows smashed — yet nothing is stolen. Claudia Cockerell investigates and discovers a more worrying pattern

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It's just after 3.30am in Islington, on a Thursday morning in May. A man wearing a canvas backpack, a black hooded jacket and a bucket hat is loitering next to a shop window, watching cars and buses pass. In a gloved hand, he's holding a red vape which he takes a long drag of. The smoke has barely billowed away when he produces a small orange emergency hammer from his pocket and smashes all of the shop's windows in four methodical blows.

Fifteen minutes later, he is wheeling a bicycle further down the road. He carefully places it on the side of a wall, checks to his left and right, and smashes the windows of a second shop before stowing the hammer in his jacket and cycling off down the pavement.

In the following weeks, the same thing will happen to shops in Oxford Street, Mayfair, Marylebone and Chelsea. The perpetrators never make any attempt to break in — they simply smash the windows and sidle off.

Over the past two years, there have been at least 50 hammer attacks on a group of stores across London. The clothing store Toast’s nine locations have had their windows broken over 20 times in total. Other clothing brands like Zadig & Voltaire, Balibaris and American Vintage have also been hit multiple times, while branches of the gift shop Scribbler have had their windows shattered 15 times, often on the same night.

"It has been very distressing for our teams as our premises have clearly been targeted for no apparent reason," Scribbler told the Standard. "The cost of the damage to us is well over £100,000. Last year our insurance company withdrew cover, as there was no indication that the incidents were stopping".