Channel 5’s documentaries about theft from shops continue to be the best and fullest advertisement for private security on TV, Mark Rowe says after the hour-long Secrets of the Shoplifting Gangs.
Police will routinely ask a shop that’s reporting a theft or indeed any crime for video. If the shop cannot provide video, any police involvement falls at that first hurdle, for video has become that basic as a tool for investigating crime. Likewise, video – whether body-camera footage or in-store – has been the basis for some years of Channel 5 documentaries about retail theft, and (so that the message isn’t too bleak for society) what retail, private security and police are doing to combat it.
Organised
The documentary made plain that theft from retail is by organised crime, though some thieves might be more organised than others (gang numbers could be anything from two up). Early on, the City St George’s University London criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor (with retired Met Police man Mick Neville, the main authority figures featured) gave a definition of organised crime to camera. Also made plain was the violence thieves are ready to give to anyone who tries to stop them; and how this affects shop staff.
Independents
The first case of several independent retailers (quoted rather than national chains, as presumably more forthcoming on the human costs of crime) was a boutique shopkeeper in Surrey that had handbags worth thousands taken. The shopkeeper said: “I have been physically threatened before; someone came into one of our stores, to grab something; I stupidly went to push him and he grabbed me by the neck; after that incident, I thought, we are never going to stop anyone again, because it isn’t worth it’. Numerous video clips showed how brazen thieves are; or, putting it another way, how aware they are of what risks they can take. In that Surrey shopkeeper’s sister store, the assistant behind the counter pressed the panic button which made an audible alert; the thief took no notice and went on taking things off the rails.
Thieves are quick (in this boutique case, taking three handbags in less than 40 seconds) and hurt shops, financially and emotionally. Handbags, though costly, are replaceable; ‘just to see how my staff are reacting to this is really sad’, one retailer said, ‘because they now second-guess every person who comes in. one person has left and she doesn’t want to work in an environment like that. None of us do.’
Pizza on menu
If we were to carp, we could say that this documentary and the others by Channel 5 for some years on the subject do not delve into the subject in any depth; they do not ask senior police about their policy towards theft from businesses, and the seeming inconsistency in response; or where all the stolen goods are going – because the criminals are hardly using the handbags, weed killer, Lego and Pokemon and so on themselves. Mick Neville did describe the online and real-world disposal of stolen goods. Pubs are one place for the stolen goods market, even with a ‘menu’ and drug addicts in the backyard going out and stealing customer orders (which allowed the documentary makers to show a cut pizza, picked up by hands).
Travelling
That thieves are organised implies that they might travel – crossing police force areas makes investigating more difficult. That also means crime against retail is happening in otherwise salubrious parts of the country – some of the other places that the documentary featured were Cambridge, Truro and Worthing, besides Romford, where My Local Bobby (the security company featured in past Channel 5 such documentaries) has red-capped on-street SIA-badged patrollers, handcuffing thieves on the street and taking them back to shops for police to attend. Again, we could find fault with the documentary makers for not going into more detail about private security using cuffs – well within living memory, police would have frowned on that so much that the security officers would have been the ones treated as criminals. The very fact that the documentary presented the cuffing without comment sends the message that it’s normal.
Sentences
A more in-depth documentary would trace one of the examples it gave as it flowed through the criminal justice system. Certainly the outcomes sounded inconsistent; some jail terms, some suspended, some community sentences. As one independent shopkeeper said, the incidents were in the hundreds: “We are talking about serious amounts of money.” Power tools, vapes, cigarettes, olive oil; the thieves stuffing prams, jackets, supermarket trollies, even ‘fat suits’ with goods; given the background of the backlogged criminal justice system, on reflection it’s difficult to see how a ‘fight back’ by retail, private security and police, though claimed towards the end of the documentary, will bring down retail theft from its record high. One answer might be tech (video powered by artificial intelligence was shown in use at a Brighton garden centre). Or private prosecution of offenders, as done as part of the My Local Bobby service. If you are looking for answers and have longer than an hour to give to the subject, ask to attend Prof Emmeline Taylor’s conference in London on business crime reduction partnerships on June 6.
How to watch
Episode one first shown on Wednesday, May 7 is repeated on Sunday, May 11 at 11.05pm; you can also watch online – visit https://www.channel5.com/show/shoplifting-gangs-inside-operation-vulture.
