The findings of the annual British Retail Consortium crime survey are in the December print edition of Professional Security. First, some BRC reports from around the regions of crime problems, and measures taken.
A convenience store in Exeter has problems with shoplifters, who regularly do the rounds in the local area. The owner suspects most of them are funding drug or alcohol problems. Living next the local pub, they also experience a lot of damage to their premises at closing time.
We have quite a few ‘regular’ shoplifters that do the rounds in the shops in our area. We suspect a lot of these are stealing to fund either drug or alcohol problems, but whenever the police are called nothing happens. They are only ever concerned about the value of the goods taken, if it isn’t worth much it isn’t worth the effort. On one occasion, someone we recognised as a regular offender came in with a female who was clearly under the influence of drugs. We kept a close eye them as they filled a basket with goods. Then the man disappeared out of the shop into his car with the basket of goods, leaving the girl behind. He also had her belongings with him including her passport. When the police arrived they were more concerned about the girls’ belonging than the theft, they don’t seem to realise it’s our livelihood. I have been here for 21 years and in that time there has never been a successful conviction.
Once we had a gang of youths in the store, one of them asked the assistant if the manager was in. When she said no, they all spread out on different isles with mobile phones trying to distract the assistant. Then one of them suddenly reached behind the till, snatching the cash tin, which had around £60 in it. They all ran off. The police were called but we didn’t hear anything more about it.
The shop is in a good area but we are near to the local pubs and staying open later means we get trouble at pub closing time, often resulting in damage to the premises such as smashed windows. One time, a fight broke out involving a troublemaker well known in the local area. A friend of the young man being threatened ran off the get his dad who chased the troublemaker. He climbed onto our roof and was followed by the dad, but unfortunately he fell through, landing in our freezer room. When the police arrived, the troublemaker knowing the system, claimed he thought the man chasing with him was carrying a knife. No action was taken. Our insurance covered most of the damage cost but not all of it.
A small chain of convenience stores in South Wales experiences a host of social problems that have caused problems for his business, customers and staff. The company has spent £68,000 in crime prevention measures in recent years.
Some of our biggest losses recently have been due to staff theft. Trust doesn’t make up for tight controls and we had some young staff members serving each other with scratch cards and the like. It is not always easy to prosecute because of the communities in which we operate.
Threats and abuse are common, especially when you refuse someone alcohol because they are underage or you know they will pass it on to kids outside the shop. It unleashes a torrent of abuse and threats to target employee homes. Violence is always a concern. Recently someone pulled a knife on one of my female members of staff, simply because he didn’t want to pay for four cans of lager.
We have panic buttons fitted to protect staff members, as well as CCTV and other security features. Police respond quickly to incidents they consider serious but for others the differences are marked. In one store we have a good relationship with the local authority and police resulting in a relatively good response. In our other store the police response is dreadful. On one Friday evening we refused to sell alcohol to a 16-year old. He then threatened my staff and kicked in the front window. The police arrived two and a half hours later, not before he had kicked in all the other windows as well.
As far as I’m concerned they are not bothered with the likes of shop theft, as it doesn’t impact their statistics. The sooner we can get them to include retail crime on annual statistics the sooner we may a better response.
A newsagent in Greater London experienced a burglary that turned violent as three men raided his shop over which he and his wife live.
They came in during the early hours. The alarms sounded which woke my wife and I. I went to investigate and found three men in the shop, raiding the till and cigarette cabinet. I struggled with one of the men, but fell to the floor where I was kicked repeatedly by one of the others. My wife tried to intervene but received a punch. I continued to struggle with two of the men who then ran off.
They got away with £500 of cash and cigarettes. The police arrived quickly and immediately identified the likely offenders. They searched a nearby house, finding the occupants awake and dressed but no evidence with which they could make a charge.
The incident left my wife very frightened and as a result I spent £7,000 on new security equipment. I now have shutters and a series of CCTV cameras that record 24 hours a day. Things have been fairly quiet since.
An unpredictable customer in an audio/visual store in Manchester gave a member of staff a shock he won’t forget for a while.
Occasionally we get abusive customers. Some people seem to think they can do and say what they want.
One time one of my staff was assaulted in very unusual circumstances. A man asked for a pen but somehow took offence to the shop assistant when it was given to him. He went berserk and hauled my staff member over the counter by his throat. Other staff managed to get him off and he ran off before the police could arrive. My staff member was pretty shaken by the incident.
We also had a small spate of attempted burglaries some time ago. Drug addicts were coming through an abandoned mill behind my shop and getting onto the roof. Three times they tried to break through the wall into the stockroom but were stopped by alarms each time. The police managed to have the mill boarded up and this has stopped the problem.
A Post Office in London has to deal with abuse and threats on a frequent basis.
My staff and I receive verbal abuse and occasionally threatening behaviour mostly around the sale of lottery, cigarettes or child travel tickets. When people cannot prove their age they sometimes react in this way.
It puts off my staff and can leave them very shaken. It is difficult especially where some threatening customers know where my staff live because they know them from the area. In the past some have even had issues with coming to work at all. We log all incidents but only occasionally make a report to the police. They definitely don’t offer a good service and hardly ever follow up reports. They wont follow up threats until the act is actually carried out.
Staff at a newsagents in Staffordshire had some 250 incidents of verbal abuse last year, mainly from youths who got nasty after being refused cigarettes. One customer also ran off with the days takings.
Most of the theft in the shop is by youths. We do have a policy where only two school children come in at one time and we also have mirrors, but it is still hard see what they are up to. There have been many cases where we catch youths sneaking chocolate bars and other small items up their sleeves and into their pockets. We always stop them and make them put the stuff back but we never call the police, as the value of the goods we sell is so low. If they do it again, we ban them but normally once they get caught we don’t see them again.
Youths who are clearly under 16 also come in attempting to buy cigarettes. When they cannot produce ID and we refuse the sale, they often get frustrated, start shouting at the member of staff and slam the door behind them. The assistants have been verbally abused hundreds of times over the last year so they are used to it. Though we are lucky its never turned physical.
One Sunday afternoon one of the sales assistants was getting ready to lock up for the day. There was one customer in the shop browsing. The assistant emptied the till and put the cash draw behind her, then the customer approached, asking her if they sold something. She leant across to reach for what the customer asked for and as she was doing so he grabbed the draw and ran out with £600 – the days takings. The police were called and came to interview us but we didn’t hear back.
And a newsagent in West Yorkshire wants shoplifting to be taken more seriously by the prosecution service.
Shop theft happens to us on a daily basis although we often only pick it up through rolling stock takes. In the long run shoplifting hits you harder than burglaries or someone coming in making demands with menaces. People just don’t see it as a crime.
A local drug addict was given an ASBO for persistent theft and other offences and appealed the order on the grounds that shoplifting wasn’t anti-social because ‘it didn’t hurt anyone’.
I don’t blame the Police, rather the prosecution service. Last Easter a girl stole four Easter eggs and ran off. I chased her with the help of a customer (I’m 60) and we caught her. She was 17 and went to court but that same afternoon she was shoplifting from a chemist over the road.
Following a spate of three burglaries some years ago I’ve had shutters installed, and have also put in an expensive tagging system.
A china and glass shop in Chippenham experienced a burglary that nearly ended their business.
On Valentines Day this year we noticed someone wandering around our store in an unusual manner. He kept looking around at the ceiling, the wiring and the doors. We watched him closely but after he left we thought nothing of it.
The next morning we came in to find £30,000 worth of stock missing – all the high value items. Someone, probably the same person we saw in the shop, had removed glass from a side window and entered the shop. We found tape on the alarm sensor that prevented it from operating, almost certainly placed on it the previous day. Our CCTV recordings showed a van parked outside the shop between 1-4am that was used to load our stock. No one had noticed it despite being just around the corner from the police station.
This incident has crippled us financially. People say ‘don’t worry you are insured’ but the insurance company took months to make a payment and insisted on security upgrades and an additional premium amounting to £2,200. We have had to take out loans to be able to operate in the interim.
The service we received from the police was fantastic but they felt that they could not charge the individual concerned. They managed to locate about £4,000 of our stolen stock held by a third party fairly quickly but it took a further six months to get this back.
