SHOPS selling used goods in Brierley Hill and Stourbridge are teaming up with cops for a new scheme to tackle crime.

Stores like Cash Converters and Cash Generator, Cex and other independent second hand stores have voluntarily signed up to a new code of practice that sees them checking any identifiable item offered up for sale to them against a national database of lost and stolen goods.

The scheme will be launched on Wednesday January 23 with an activation day when officers from the Merry Hill team will visit electrical goods shops to hand out literature about the registration goods on the immobilise database.

Between 11.30am and 6pm officers will have a stall at Merry Hill shopping centre to help the public register property on immobilise and provide them with crime prevention literature.

Officers will also be promoting the immobilse database in Stourbridge and other town centres around the region.

Dc Vanessa Lewis, from West Midlands Police, said: "A lot of people don't realise that if you buy a stolen phone, ipad or laptop, even if you don't know it's stolen then you could be charged with handling stolen goods or at the very least have the property taken from you.

"With this new scheme, shoppers buying at stores bearing our stickers can buy with confidence, knowing that the goods they have bought have not been registered lost or stolen by the police.

"Purchasers should then register their goods at www.immobilise.com so that should they be lost or stolen in the future and recovered by us we more easily reunite the item with their owner".