As coordinated by the police’s National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), last month was a national month of action to tackle retail crime. Mark Rowe reviews crime against retail afterwards.
First, we shouldn’t take for granted the sheer millions of crimes, and how retailers generally agree crimes against them are worsening, for whatever reason (academic research for the Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan by the London School of Economics released last month found a ‘significant correlation’ between the cost of living, and the calls to police. However, as the researchers added, that doesn’t imply an increase in the cost of living causes more calls to police).
In any case, why crime happens is not what most bothers those independent retailers surveyed by BIRA (British Independent Retailers Association) and the findings released in March. The survey found crime is persistent including verbal and physical abuse suffered by shop staff. One shop keeper said: “A customer threw a hammer at me in the shop and physically assaulted me. The police did not take action even though I had CCTV, his reg and his home address.”
Another said: “We have had multiple issues where police haven’t attended. One was when a customer shoved me out the way. The second a lady threw a bottle of drain clear into the shop without looking and police never came.”
Andrew Goodacre, CEO of Bira, said the results paint a troubling picture of the challenges faced by independent retailers across the UK. “Retail crime not only inflicts financial losses but also poses a grave threat to the safety and well-being of shop staff.”
As for the official, national retail crime action plan as launched last autumn, he suggested it may be too early to judge if it is making a difference. “However, we are hearing mixed feedback about the buy-in from individual police forces and that is unacceptable. We have a national problem that merits a national, co-ordinated and consistent response. BIRA will continue to work with the Home Office and the police forces to better protect business owners and the people who work in the shop.”
Some responding to the survey were sceptical about the police ‘101’ number for reporting of non-emergency crimes, citing it as “too much trouble” to report every incident, or deemed use of it as “pointless”.
Other, larger retail trade associations have painted a similar picture in their surveys – the British Retail Consortium; and the ACS (Association of Convenience Stores): that besides the actual crime, retailers are complaining of an unreliable, or zero, response from the police, and asking for more.
Hence indeed the month of Safer Business Action Days (SaBAs), as arranged actions by police forces in England and Wales and covering from Truro and Portsmouth to Carlisle and Blyth. Our not very original conclusion is that police response to the month, like police response to crime against businesses generally, varied; because some police put in more, and more concerted, effort than others. For example, in Hertfordshire the Welwyn Hatfield Neighbourhood Policing Team twice ran a stall inside the John Lewis department store in Welwyn Garden City (pictured). Which does pose the question of what was different or how the police service changed after the six hours the stall was there and the leaflets had been picked up.
The same goes for longer ‘week of action’ or operation, such as carried out by Durham Police; if those resources then get deployed to other, no less pressing and deserving, crime types, metal theft or theft from vehicles to name only two, criminals will drift back (having made themselves scarce if they have any sense, seeing or hearing of a police presence) and businesses are back to square one.
Consistent response to crime against retail requires, in a word, partnership: goodwill on all sides, someone to coordinate and stick up for retailers, and the tools to do that – to record crimes and nuisances, so as to measure the problem and hold those in authority to account – which requires some money, whether from membership fees of a BCRP (business crime reduction partnership) or BID (business improvement district), or grant from a police and crime commissioner. Northamptonshire took part in the month (far from all forces did).
Alison Farr, Crime Manager at the Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership (NBCP), said: “We’ve worked in partnership with Northamptonshire Police for many years and our relationship has grown stronger than ever in the last few years, particularly since the launch of Operation Elegance and the Force’s commitment to fighting retail crime. With funding from the PFCC [police and fire commissioner] the NBCP employs two evidence gatherers who support retailers in completing evidence to support the prosecution of persistent and violent offenders, working very closely with Operation Elegance and the forthcoming force Retail Crime Team.”
The not very original conclusion is that as so often in life, if retail wants something doing about crime, it cannot wait for something to happen but has to lobby for it and do its bit, whether paying for a retail radio scheme or incident reporting software, or hanging on the line to report a crime, even if it’s inconvenient (and for independent, one-man band retailers, that could mean the shop has to close meanwhile). No-one is to blame for lack of police response; police have no end on their plate (retail and business got no mention in the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary ‘state of policing’ report of June 2023).
No-one, except perhaps the criminals for doing the crime in the first place, or the police and crime commissioners, who are democratically accountable in England and Wales for local police forces (and the four-yearly elections, the fourth since PCCs began in 2012, are on May 2). As Sussex PCC Katy Bourne noted, as national business lead for PCCs, all police forces have signed up to a ‘Retail Crime Action Plan’. Last month the APCC (Association of Police and Crime Commissioners) released case studies about the tackling of retail and business crime.
Again, the release implied good work is patchy, and even in forces with initiatives to trumpet, funding may be far from secure (in Portsmouth, the city council, Southern Co-op, the charity Society of St James and police point a ‘Navigator’ to the most prolific shoplifters; the aim, to ‘break the cycle’ of offending, whether due to drug addiction, or a chaotic and homeless lifestyle more generally; the scheme is a trial, funded to August). It might seem obvious that some shop thieves at least might be amenable to turning a new leaf. If that would mean shops lose fewer goods and spend less on security guards and other loss prevention, that might even mean such schemes show a return on investment, whatever you call them (like the ‘offender to rehab’ scheme set up by West Midlands Police PC Stuart Toogood). Which poses the question, why isn’t such good practice, national, and long before now?
