I knew shop lifting was a problem but I didn't imagine it was like this..

[SunShow]

DS is working in a Tesco Express. He personally makes around 8 shop lifting reports every day. Obviously these are just the one he sees.

I imagined that shoplifting was kids/teens stealing a chocolate bar or desperate people stealing food and that does happen, but most of it is much larger scale. Yesterday he had people arrive with rucksacks and literally sweep the contents of a shelf into their bags.

Staff are taught not to confront them (good as far as his mother is concerned!) and police take no action even when there is good CCTV.

This is a small supermarket in the nicer bit of a perfectly pleasant suburban town.

I think physical shops won’t exist in ten years. It will be a different landscape.

My DD used to take the number down of the company and get the manager to phone them up to let them know their staff were stealing. For a lot of them it seemed to stop after that!

I wonder if we need to go back to NYC under Guiliani? He introduced the broken window theory there, with zero tolerance for all the ‘small’ petty crimes which in turn had an effect on bigger crimes. There are issues with the theory but it’s worth a try before we descend into complete lawlessness? It certainly cleaned up a New York which was a pretty scary place at the time.

DH was in a Tesco metro in central London, paying for some items when a couple came in, took several bottles of wine each and walked out the shop. The cashier said it happened quite regularly

Was in TK Max and all the earrings had pairs missing. I wanted a stack of two/three for each ear and they had nice sets but missing pairs in each box. I ended up buying some I liked with a missing pair. Got a discount at the till but the cashier said there’s nothing they can do stuff is constantly nicked. There was literally empty jewellery boxes on the shelves

It wouldn’t surprise me if more shops go online only to prevent all this theft. What a shame to have no high streets left as a result though. It’s all so outrageous.

I work in a well known store (not a supermarket) - don’t know what the statistics are but it’s definitely got worse in the last few years. We have CCTV but no security guards. One of my colleagues is fierce & tackles shoplifters head on, although she really shouldn’t be doing it!

I watched some woman stand at the door of out Tesco express handing out bottles of wine and steak to a guy outside packing them in his rucksack. I told the store and they said yes we watched it on CCTV and they do it all the time. I did think at least don’t have the wind by the In door which is completely out of sight of the checkouts 🤔

All the. national chain shops in our small outer London suburb have hefty security at the door, they call the police regularly but the thieving still goes on. The staff on the self-checkout tell me that they let security know if someone is obviously stealing whilst checking out but few get caught. I've even seen people obviously stealing from Greggs.
The new Lidl locally has a gate which requires you to scan a receipt barcode to leave - there is no other way out. There is one of these in Morrisons too, but I don't think that they use it.
As someone said above, this is not a victimless crime, we're all paying for it in rising prices.

What happens in the places where you scan to get out of you don’t buy anything?

My brother has worked for the co op for over 20 years, he's very large and used to take on shoplifters himself with great success. He's not allowed to do it now due to company policy, so he has to note down what has been stolen and compile a daily list to send to head office.
He's said that since this policy came in , there are more thefts than purchases. So if you've ever wondered why the prices in the Co op are so high, there's your answer 🤔

No idea, guess you have to ask to be let out?

And that’s the problem. It’s the honest people who have to pay for it.

Yet Co op spent £100 million on the branding for the Arena in Mcr. That's a lot of tea bags and sandwiches.

You tailgate someone leaving or ask an assistant to be let out

The Blob has decided that it isn't worth the time and money to prosecute most crime, that's the problem. There's no space in prison (except for racist rioters of course), there's no money and resources for community payback schemes, so there is no punishment for anything.

Listen to the first episode of the latest series of Alfie Moore's radio show It's a Fair Cop about an assault on an old man at a bus stop. They know who did it, arrested them, but CPS said it wasn't worth it so PC Moore has to go and tell and old man I'm hospital that no further action will be taken. And I believe this story, because the same thing happened to my husband, who filmed his assault which clearly identified his attacker, but CPS said that the witness statement couldn't be counted on as reliable because we knew the witness - he was our next door neighbour!

No it's not the only reason - obviously climate change, supply chains etc. But shoplifting pales in comparison to all of those.

It's obviously an issue that we have increased shoplifting, but we shouldn't get hung up on the wrong things.

Blaming shoplifting for increased food prices is ridiculous in the context of everything else and people need to be more aware of the numerous factors. Shoplifting is pretty insignificant in comparison to things like Brexit and climate change.

Our local supermarket had the scan gate where the self checkouts are if you don't buy anything, and thus dont go to the self checkout , there is an exit gate (no receipt required) by the entrance. I have been in just to use their toilets before and used the other exit gate
Or potentially you could get out via one of the "manned" tills that usually aren't manned

Blaming shoplifting for increased food prices is ridiculous in the context of everything else and people need to be more aware of the numerous factors. Shoplifting is pretty insignificant in comparison to things like Brexit and climate change.

So, what are you saying? That's it's not worth bothering about? Shoplifting and other 'low level' crime that has increased recently are estimated to cost the UK economy £170 billion pounds a year, over 6% of GDP. If you add in the extra costs caused by shops closing because people become afraid to go out shopping, and communities losing amenities such as a viable high street, jobs lost etc brings this up to around £250 billion a year. Bear in mind the recent welfare bill was hoping to save £5 billion.

Going on about climate change being worse, is just bollocks, although Ed Miliband's vanity project to reach net zero before anyone else is certainly not helping either though, and has massively contributed to the CoL.

My son had his laptop stolen at the airport . Ther was CCTV footage of it and the perpetrator. The police were absolutely useless. My son had to phone them virtually weekly for two years, pushing and pushing to get compensation and get the guy charged. Eventually the guy paid him back monthly over about three years. He lost thousands of tracks which had cost him a fortune to buy (he’s a DJ). The police just didn’t care .
Yet I had my car impounded and was fined a fortune for forgetting to pay my car insurance. It was a genuine oversight and never happened before . Obviously I was culpable but it cost me over a thousand pounds and they acted like I was a terrible criminal. There are people out there assaulting and raping, killing people and stealing and getting away with it.

A Greggs local to me has reconfigured the store so that the counter is at the front and all the stock is behind. You have to ask for and pay for what you want before the staff member hands it over.

staff told me that they’d done it because they were losing more in theft than they were taking in sales

Not sure what her being Asian has to do with anything 🤷🏻‍♀️ You'd already mentioned she was small which was the point you were making.

The police need to arrest and charge every shoplifter, no matter the value of the item stolen. And anyone convicted of shoplifting should do prison time, no exceptions, no excuses.

Make drugs legal and sell through government shops should stop a lot of crime.
Stopping prohibition and more recently opening drug stores in the USA have had some success. The government has gained more taxes having things being sold legally. Taxes could pay for free drugs in controlled centers.

Maybe instead if prison we could tag persistent shoplifters and when they enter a shop an alarm goes off so everyone knows they are a shoplifter. Also you would see this tag on their arm of leg so know they are a bad 'un.