Certain Habits

Apparently all shoe stores in Sweden display left-footed shoes. This should eliminate any incentive for thieves to steal the displays, since a left-footed shoe is worthless without its other pair, right?

Well, not so fast. Thing is, all shoe stores in neighboring Denmark display only right-footed shoes. Creating a perfect cross-border arbitrage opportunity. According to The Times of London:

For a short while, the thieves were one step ahead of the detectives. And for Swedish police and shoeshop owners, that was exactly the problem: why were people stealing the left shoes of designer footwear from Stockholm boutiques?

Perhaps it was a case for Slipper of the Yard, but eventually the clues pointed only one way — to Denmark, where shops traditionally display the right shoe in their racks. Police were therefore able to announce yesterday that they had foiled a criminal masterplan to match up stolen left shoes from Malmö with the corresponding right shoes pilfered in Copenhagen.

“Apparently this is a tried and tested approach,” said Stig Möller, a police superintendent in Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city and scene of the initial crime. Staff at a shoe shop in the Entré shopping mall in Malmö saw two men in their fifties stealing left shoes at their boutique at the weekend. The duo escaped with seven left shoes which — if paired with the right shoes — were worth £900.

Although the robbery was small-scale, the type of theft was said to be a common crime.