Retailers Against Crime in Northern Ireland (RACNI) held a conference in Belfast. Mark Rowe was there.
During the lunch break the Scottish security man looked out of the glass from the Waterfront Centre and took in the view across a sunny Belfast city centre. He recalled the days with a previous employer, when his work sometimes took him to one of the landmark buildings in the city, for regional meetings. Sometimes during the Troubles, he said, it had been so dangerous that the gatherings were held somewhere quieter that is, less likely to be bombed) outside the city. The decades-long Irish republican terror campaign is over. Belfast city centre retail looks flourishing and reminds the visitor of mainland UK cities like Newcastle and Glasgow. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Shaun Woodward, speaks of further moves in Northern Ireland towards ‘normalisation’. Yet as a loss prevention manager in Newcastle and Glasgow will tell you, ‘normal’ can mean shoplifting, dishonest staff, counterfeit currency, particularly £20 notes, and some violent and aggressive customers. Northern Ireland has loss prevention similarities with the rest of the UK, particularly Scotland; RACNI originated with the Stirling-based Scottish Business Crime Centre (www.sbcc.org.uk), where Maxine Fraser runs Retailers Against Crime Scotland (RACS), itself launched in 1997. As she told the event, there are more than 4000 offenders on the RACS database. It seeks to identify prolific, travelling and professional criminals. Maxine named one Glasgow ‘team’ of shoplifters with 50 to 100 members, whose biggest known ‘lift’, she said, had been £7500 of goods in seven minutes. As she said: "That’s a lot of stock. They aren’t going out for that one lift in a day, you can be assured." She guessed that such a gang’s take might be £100,000 of goods in a day: "This is very serious crime."
Visitors
The province has its own peculiarities, too. Partly, this is due to geography, though some visitors from the mainland flew over the evening before, some that morning. The opening topic of conversation for the English visitors that day, for once, was not the weather – which was fine – but ‘when did you fly?’. Exhibitors were Securitas, sponsors of RACNI; the Bank of England, about checking banknotes are genuine, as featured in the June issue of Professional Security; and Northampton-based guarding contractors VSG, who have had a Belfast office for some years. Among their national contracts are with DIY chain B&Q, and at the event some uniformed officers were carrying on their white shirts both the retailer’s and the guard firm’s logo. Another guarding providers there was G4S; and from a NI-based guard company, Robert Willis of Lisburn-based Checkmate Guarding. Some had come from the Irish Republic; and plenty of people from RACNI shopping centre and retailer members were there – familiar high street names such as Tesco, ASDA, Marks & Spencer and Topshop. Visitors from the mainland included Tony Jopson, part of the Business Crime Direct team at Liverpool Chamber of Commerce; and Roger Percy, MD of the cash handling and currency security product firm based in Liverpool, Banknote Bodyguard.
Hard Target
Quality of speakers was high. On the agenda, Brian Miller of UK payments association APACS had nearly two hours on the subjects of plastic card crime and identity theft, but this former police officer was such an assured speaker, involving the audience, even, that the time did not drag. Ross Ferguson simply commanded the stage as he talked pithily and entertainingly about Strathclyde Police’s Hard Target training in Glasgow city centre. Briefly, Ross – a graduate in politics and social studies who worked in retail management and sales before he joined Strathclyde in 2000 – took the post of business security officer in 2006. Ross teaches retail staff how shoplifting is done; and explains what the law is so that staff know where they stand, if they try to deter and detain shoplifters. He took the audience through the advice he gives, first passing around examples of foil-lined bags as used by shoplifters to get around a store’s product tagging. The most common bag used is from Next: "The reasons: they make good bags and they make good sizes of bags. You can get more stuff in them." The tell-tale sign; a plastic bag lined with foil does not sag. Something else to look for, as used by juveniles: coffee cups, or crisp packets. Either can conceal small but valuable items such as jewellery. The thief will Sellotape one side of the lid, so that it does not fall off and attract staff or customer attention. Again, it’s a tell-tale sign, because as Ross said, who do 13 and 14-year-olds drink? (‘Vodka!’ someone said in the audience, to laughter.) Teenagers drink not regular coffee, but pop. As for the crisp packet, it would be lined with foil and used to steal CDs and computer games. Some thieves will even leave a few crisps to eat cockily on the way out – Ross here doing a funny impersonation of such a thief.
Food and drink
In this case as elsewhere he went on to explain what retailers can do, without confrontation, to prevent such shoplifter methods. "You can have a wee sign on the door saying, no food or drink. And all you say to the customer – tell them a sob story that there was a spillage." That is, that someone coming into store with a drink spilled it and that led to trouble from the manager. Genuine customers will accept that, and hand their food or drink to a member of staff, or will turn on their heels. With his retail background, Ross was plainly alert to the common reasons why retailers do not do all they could on loss prevention and security. One reason: there aren’t enough staff. Ross suggested someone at the front door, to smile at people coming in, which will discourage thieves; and offer customer service to anyone acting suspiciously in a shop. In fitting rooms, ensure a member of staff is there, to check items in and out. He suggested a cash reward for staff who do good things in crime prevention, on the same lines as rewarding staff for meeting sales targets. "Everyone on the high street is in competition for sales; they aren’t in competition for security. You are all together in security. You are not in competition to lose money; by helping each other out, theft comes down," he said, which indeed is the principle of such schemes as RACNI.
Worth it
Similarly, Ross raised the most common response from retailers resisting his Hard Target training; that one hour is a long time for staff to be off the shop floor. But as Ross added, it’s worth it, for keeping more stock in store. Ross had this to say on whether to arrest someone – a topic that over the years has provoked much reader comment in Professional Security. It’s the staff decision, Ross said, because there may be risk of violence. There must be corroboration of evidence, whether a second person at the scene or CCTV. And as for what is ‘reasonable force’, how you approach the shoplifter and speak to them will affect what happens. Treat people the way you would want to be treated. For instance, do not swear. It is wrong to go too close – closer than four to six feet – to the offender, because, as Ross put it with Glaswegian frankness, the offender could ‘nut’ you. Staying more than four to six feet from the suspect, you the shop assistant can still deliver customer service. Put your hands out, palms up shows everyone looking towards you that you do not want to be a victim. By contrast if you square up to someone, the CCTV footage will look as if you are being aggressive, and the offender could claim to be the victim. "All we teach retailers is – distance – and to stand safely," Ross said, "and make sure on CCTV you are the victim, and it works." This training, he summed up (and there was much more), gives staff the confidence to know what they are doing; and they feel safe.
Overview
From Ross Ferguson’s ground-floor talk (literally! He joked during his talk that a stamp on the head in Glasgow on a Saturday night is flirting … that was a joke, right?!) the next and final police speaker, Chief Supt Brian Maguire, by contrast, gave an overview. He is deputy head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s criminal justice department. He is a 26-year policeman, formerly with the Royal Ulster Constabulary – the former name for PSNI, one of the changes as part of the peace process of recent years. As Chief Supt Maguire said, economic investment depends on confidence, which includes that the economy will not be undermined by crime. "It would be fair to say in the past retail crime has been overshadowed by other problems," he said. Here he mentioned the recent discovery of incendiary devices. "Over recent years the security situation has improved dramatically and business crime is a key item on the police service agenda."
Incendiaries
(To explain that reference to incendiaries, ‘bombers target shop’ was the headline in the Irish News the day before, May 28. It reported that a device left at JJB Sports on Royal Avenue, the main shopping street in Belfast, partially exploded. The newspaper pictured uniformed ‘British Army bomb experts’ and fire crew outside the taped-off store front. You could argue that the very fact that the incendiary, which went off in the early hours of May 27, got such publicity was a good sign – that such bomb-planting is less usual since the end of the Troubles, and hence more newsworthy.)
Business confidence
Chief Supt Maguire spoke of the business steering group appointed a year ago, by Deputy Chief Constable Paul Leighton, to cover such business crime topics as extortion, intellectual property theft, and e-crime. Maguire described counterfeit goods in Northern Ireland as a ‘significant problem for the retail trade’ – which quite often funds terrorism. PSNI works with industry bodies in this area such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Group (www.a-cg.com), the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT, www.fact-uk.org.uk) and Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA). (To be fair, Belfast is far from the only city that sees copyright and trademark offences, and where police, trading standards officers and bodies like FACT tackle counterfeiters, whether their ‘factories’ or sales at markets.) Similarly, PSNI is not the only police force whose officers – as Chief Supt Maguire admitted – may be reluctant to provide details of offenders to businesses. He did add that the PSNI is going to make it easier for retailers to get such information; on-line, too; to aid retailers seeking civil recovery in cases of theft from shops. And again, Chief Supt Maguire is far from the only senior officer who has told a business audience that police cannot address business crime in isolation, but need the support of the wider business community. In the new political climate, he ended significantly, businesses are naturally enough looking forward to benefits. "It is a time of optimism, and rightly so." He repeated that the ‘improved environment’ as enjoyed by businesses meant that criminality ‘at every level’ is effectively tackled. He did not go on to warn what would happen, if the worst happened – if a vicious circle set in of criminal paramilitaries extorting from businesses and undermining profits so much that investment pulled out of Northern Ireland, leading to unemployment and, maybe, youths recruited to the paramilitaries. You could say that the Northern Irish men and women in the audience did not need to be told what was at stake.
About Retailers Against Crime in Northern Ireland: Like the similar Retailers Against Crime in Scotland, it’s a partnership, between retailers, shopping centres and the police. Chairman is Colin McShane, of B&Q plc, who has been with the retail chain for 13 years, on the profit protection side for four years. He is divisional profit protection manager for Ireland and Scotland. Co-ordinating RACNI is Maxine Fraser, who joined Retailers Against Crime in Scotland in 1998, and has built membership up to hundreds of stores, and growing. She also provides training and guidance in retail crime prevention and reduction. She appeared in the Channel 4 documentary, Secrets of the Shoplifters, which featured in this retail magazine in 2005. Like business crime reduction partnerships in towns and cities around the UK, RACNI circulates – according to data protection rules – information to members, highlighting in particular travelling offenders, who affect profitability of stores. Since its launch in NI in July 2007, RACNI has already identified otherwise unknown and ‘cross water’ offenders. Also, members in stores have recognised offenders from the RACNI bulletins. In January, as featured in Professional Security, the Police Service of Northern Ireland signed a formal information-sharing protocol with RACNI. For details email [email protected]
