Are shoplifters pretty much allowed to do as they please now?

[Easipeelerie]

In the last year, I’ve come across shoplifters frequently. I’ve mainly seen them operating in clothes shops and supermarkets. I was in a big clothes shop the other day and it was quiet so some staff were just chatting. Meanwhile, I was watching a woman with a system where she had a plastic bag hanging on a hook nearby and a big shoulderbag. She was filling the plastic bag with belts, I presume so that if she was challenged, she could say it wasn’t her bag. She then decanted to her shoulder bag and sped off. I told security the next day as they weren’t there that day - a shop in a big shopping centre with multiple entrances and no security on any of them.

The issue seems to me that often security are just not there. If they’re on a break or off for the day, there’s no one to replace them. When I’ve told security and shop staff what I’ve seen, they tell me they’re not allowed to challenge them. It makes me anxious shopping as I’m aware of what the shoplifters are doing whilst no one else around seems to know or care.

Do shops nowadays just build loss from shoplifting into their business plans?

I have a friend who has her own little independent shop. She has cameras everywhere.
She has had people nick stuff, and she then posts the footage on social media. Someone always recognises them... she always gets her stuff back.

Yes a UK high street store.

The bigger supermarkets are already using a lot of this technology.

To be fair I have about 6 pairs of BNWT Nike football socks in my Vinted pile to sell, not shoplifted but my son gets a couple of new pairs with his football kit from his club every year and he never wears them as he is a goalie and likes wearing goalie trousers and normal socks!

The problem is the serious, prolific thefts are committed by organized gangs often overseas. The people doing the nicking are basically disposable like in county lines drug dealing. They just find someone else to nick the stuff if they get caught.
The organized gangs aren't targeting small shops

Once facial recognition kicks in then future shoplifters will just get turned around at the entrance hopefully. This is bad for everyone, allowing crime just encourages it and career criminals will increase.

Tesco made £2.7bn profit in 2023.

So?
People should not be nicking stuff, full stop.

Retail manager here. We can’t do anything to physically stop them as we’d lose our jobs, we try to deter but that’s all we can do and it doesn’t stop the career criminals. I myself have been assaulted twice just for walking round the corner and coming face to face with a shoplifter on their way out.

my local police are great, we report the big thefts and the well known shoplifters and they always follow up. It’s just unfortunate that it can take months to get enough footage and charges brought against them to have them banned.

There's a lot of outrage about shoplifting, (absolutely rightly, in my view) but then we have had loads of threads in the past where people admit they routinely don't pay for stuff at self check out tills and the general consensus is that this is perfectly fine. A significant proportion of the population seem to be completely lacking in any moral sense.

I was in Next earlier and some guy literally put a candle under his armpit. My 14 year old noticed and he death stared her until we left - she didn't tell me until we were in the car or I would have outed him for

1. Trying to intimadate a child
2. Nicking anything to the security

In my Tesco I seem to be pulled over for buying a steak but we have seen people with full trolleys of unpaid items just speeding through the exit.

It's nuts - but no one seems to do anything.

The law and enforcement are so soft. We all pay the price through higher costing goods. The police don't bother too much with shoplifting, if someone says a mean thing on social media though they'll be all over it 😂only half joking

They do fucking care. They know though that
A) police cells are full every night and day
B) courts even magistrate courts are required naming about a year behind
C) prisons are full to bursting.

Don't blame the police for this.

Because the prisons are full - full of minor offenders while serious criminals can't get to court because the prisons are full.

Jesus H. It's not labours fault. It's the tories fault for allowing the prison service to decay on their 14 year watch.

Very true. I remember a thread from a little while ago where the OP was asking if she was really doing anything very wrong by buying from shoplifters, as 'they'll be stealing it anyway, so what does it matter if I buy it from them half-price or if somebody else does?'

There was quite a bit more sympathy for shoplifters and their encouragers (like OP) than I'd anticipated.

A lot of people (as has already happened on this thread) will just state how much profit the massive supermarket chains make, as though that somehow justifies stealing from them - and as though we, their paying customers, don't pay more than our fair share towards those profits, to make up for all of the money that they lose to thefts.

I don't feel sad, I feel angry that people steal from others, business or private. Do you honestly think they would not steal from normal people? Not to mention most likely they are already on benefit which tax payers like me pay with my hard earned money. These people are scums.

They literally told me it hadn’t been looked into and they were going to change it to a new officer and then never updated me.

The police don’t give a shit.

So have the police been ordered to stop arresting people committing crimes, then?

Surely the police should still be doing their jobs as diligently as ever, and then, if the people further up the chain - magistrates/judges and ultimately politicians - find themselves unable to deal with their part of the process, that's on them?

If nothing else, public opinion of the police is very low as it is; you'd think the police would want to be able to legitimately say that they have done their job properly, and so to complain about the court and prison systems if they are responsible for nothing further happening to criminals.

Anything else seems to be based on getting PC Plod to do the politicians' dirty work, take the blame and get them off the hook.

Action is taken against the most prolific offenders

Other thefts might not be pursued but If the person is identified & then comes into contact with police for something else then they may be charged with the shoplifting offence at that point. We often see people charged with shoplifting many months after the offences as they have been stopped for other offences eg using a mobile phone whilst driving, drink/drug driving, speeding etc

Facial recognition is being used a bit like fingerprint evidence.

I agree the Police are not making enough effort and not getting the support they need.

There also needs to be more done by stores, some I have used have a barrier and a receipt needs to be scanned to open it. Probably even more could be done, such as limiting what you can scan without staff approval.

“It's the responsibility of these stores. They make enough money to have proper security.”

this attitude stinks. Who do you think ultimately
pays with price increases???

In America they are being robbed so much they shut shop

The funniest one I ever saw was in Sainsbury’s. A woman was walking out with an overflowing trolley and all of a sudden the wheels locked. She panicked and just ran for it with her accomplice! They had piles of meat and loads of Lego as well. There was £100s of stuff in there but no-one tried to chase after them 🤷‍♀️

I also once saw someone scan through a whole shop in Tesco Express (around £55) They then calmly picked it up and walked off. I told the lady behind the counter but she just shrugged and security did absolutely nothing.

Funny you should mention Greggs as that’s the only place I’ve ever seen a shoplifter successfully challenged. A man was stood next to me and slipped a packet of doughnuts into his pocket and the lady behind the counter yelled at him to put them back! Amazingly, he did. I actually felt quite sorry for the guy tbh. I suspect he may have been homeless and must have been very hungry.

I work for Greggs, we average probably 10 shoplifters a day. Police don't care as it's low value, company attitude seems much the same. The only time anyone is interested is if they become aggressive - we successfully got one person banned after they pushed/kicked/grabbed/spat at 6 members of staff over the course of 3-4 months, stealing pretty much every day in between the incidents that escalated. So now we don't bother to try stopping anyone. If the company don't care, and the police don't care, I'm not going to put myself or my team at risk!

I've witnessed people (usually the same ones time and time again) just taking stuff from shops and walking out. The first time I saw it,I told a member of staff and she said there was nothing they could do. But I can guarantee that if I tried doing this,I'd be jumped on straight away! Not that I intend trying I might add! I don't see the point of security guards in stores if they are helpless to do anything.