My plan to tackle retail crime
- Feedback on case progress and outcome to keep victims of business crime informed.
- More regular engagement between local police and retailers to share information.
- Invest in technology to more easily upload video, saving businesses and police time.
- A business and retail crime lead officer in each Local Police Team.
See my video here... https://www.facebook.com/StaffordshirePFCC/videos/692997036318039
Shoplifting and assaults on shopworkers have been in the news recently and for good reason. People really care about their local shops and respect the people working in them. The pandemic highlighted just how much we value these businesses and staff who often work late into the night. It is no surprise that the community support moves to make punishments for assaults on shopworkers stricter and they expect the police to work closely with the industry to keep shopworkers safe and protect their businesses. If shops can't make a reasonable return then they will close. Local community shops simply cannot afford the losses due to shoplifting.
Shoplifting isn't new but the increased activity of organised criminals and repeat offenders is on the rise. In some parts of the country organised criminals are sweeping shelves in supermarkets often threatening security staff with weapons before moving onto the next store and others are forcing vulnerable people people to regularly steal high values items from shops that that can be easily sold on. This exploitation is a form of modern slavery.
So far in Staffordshire only few retail businesses have been targeted by shelf sweepers but many have been victims of shoplifters. I visited a Co-Op in Norton, Stoke-on-Trent and a Spar in Stafford recently to hear how they have been affected. The visits were an eye-opener. I was incredibly impressed with how keen they were to help those who were clearly struggling to make ends meet. They would look to link the individuals with nearby support services before reporting them, essentially they managed many of these incidents themselves.
Where they need help from the police is when there is threatening behaviour and with repeat offenders, those taking goods to sell day after day, often to feed an addiction. I discovered that the retailers had generally collected video evidence so they were in a position to help the police conduct an investigation. Before visiting the Co-Op the local police team provided me with statistics on investigations linked to the Norton store. I was pleased to report to the team at the shop that over 80% of incidents they had reported had led to someone being charged. A pretty impressive outcome but I was disappointed that the staff didn't already know about this good policing. In my experience victims of crime and those that report an incident want, and need, to know if the perpetrator has been caught.
Owners and managers also welcome regular meetings with their local officers and PCSOs where they can share information on activity reported by other stores and learn known shoplifters that have been released for them to look out for. Regular personal dialogue with repeat victims of crime matters and in many parts of Staffordshire this is already the case, not everywhere but with more of our student officers completing their training and able to spend more time with their local neighbourhood colleagues I think this can become business as usual.
With every store seeming to have different CCTV systems it is timely that the police are evaluating new systems that allow video, from all sorts of sources, to be uploaded to a secure site in formats that are ready for use in prosecutions. This would save retailers and investigators hours.
Retail crime matters. By investing in more pro-active policing to tackle organised criminals and improving engagement with local police teams that Staffordshire Police can help to protect the shop workers and businesses that communities value.