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.

*sorry for all the typos!

Well there is the FaceWatch technology used by several store chains. A camera matches your face against a database, and if it gets a match a member of staff (should) do a double check before taking action (but who knows what that would be!)

of course this is the thin end of the wedge to a whole era of surveillance with the added fun of leading to a Chinese style social currency

They would just rip the tags off. The only deterrent that works is prison. Long sentences in proper prisons with bread and water and no luxuries. And hard labour.

Did you mean to quote me or the original poster who said it?

Our Morrison’s got some smaller plastic trolleys, just the right size if you didn’t want to lug a heavy basket. A week they lasted. Same store, a small but fierce young woman member of staff confronted and kicked two repeat offenders (barred from every shop in town and surrounding areas)out the other day. She was not taking any shit.(huge security bloke stood there nervously) I mentioned it to ds, who is a manager there and he said “no one fucks with her, she’s rock hard” but why should she have to?

And yet our prisons are full. And about to get even worse now that free speech is a criminal offence.
The world has gone downhill since we stopped using the stocks as punishment. We should bring that back for shoplifting. Rotting fruit and vegetables to hand. Oh, forget. Since Brexit nobody there to pick the fruit and vegetables. All the Uk commoners on PIP and busy watching their flat screen televisions.

Wow, on a thread about shoplifting, and you got to have a pop at people on PIP.
That is absolutely nothing to do with this thread. And what TV can you get that is not a flat screen? CRT TVs have not been in shops for years.

I’m afraid you have rather missed the point. Spectacularly so.

I think it is time for a national ID card scheme.

What difference would that make? No one is stopping them, so no one will check their ID.

Shops could have scanners so they know exactly who is coming in and out.

People steal from our charity shop to sell on

How’s that going to work? Who will maintain a database of who went into retailer?
Being present in a shop isn’t is not in itself going to meet threshold for shoplifting case

A lot of the more prolific shoplifters are already known to the police. They know who they are. They just don't do anything about it.

Again they already have those locally, councils operate a watch list

You could have 'mystery shopper/cops' to catch them.

A LOT of our shoplifters are kids. School kids. Egging one another on to come in and shove as many sweets as they can into their school bags while one of them distracts the staff. Putting bottles of drinks into their coat pockets and just paying for one bag of crisps.
Shoplifting starts here. The parents are always horrified when we tell them (as I said, a very rural local shop, everyone knows everyone and someone will watch the CCTV video and say 'oh, that's Molly's boy, he's in Year 8 with my lad.' Usually the kids grow out of it, but we've had to ban a few of them from coming in, and when a group come in we're always on the alert. Girls steal make up, boys steal food.

Who would pay/maintain that? Would you have one? The DVLA doesn't know how many cars/drivers there are, and ID card that would be v.quickly faked wouldn't work. And the Police still wouldn't turn out.

Makes me wonder what kind of a society we are when we are accepting/enabling financial dishonesty and how it will affect future generations basic actions “if its not mine -don’t put it in my pocket ‘ is no longer the golden rule
also people do not value things that they have not legitimately obtained in the same way that’ they appreciate things that are obtained honestly the trouble is that everyone is subsiding the behaviour with higher prices

No. There is not a local authority database of shoplifters
There may be shared information about hotspots etc but a database with photos, no

Some children in my school stole from a shop (clothes) and brought the stuff to school. We phoned the shop, they said don't worry about it. We called the police and they pretty much said the same. We took the children back to the shop to return what they had stolen, but I'm not sure it was an experience that deterred them from stealing. Quite the opposite, in fact.

After seeing a PP about 'DNA tagging', I went and read the company's website. It seems to be UV tagging, but still ... their widget squirts a persistent UV-readable dye at offenders. The company asserts this provides incontrovertible proof.

But it's only proof that the person was there and had dye squirted on them, nothing else!

I did like the fog generators, though. You'd have to make sure your fog doesn't provide thieves with an opportunity to get away with their swag, but I love this creative approach to foiling robberies while doing no harm 🌫

I've never understood why Brits are so resistant to ID cards; I've always thought we should have 'em. These days, you could have the shelves take a photo and read the ID if all their stock was removed too quickly. (Cue robbers turning up with replacement weights and stolen IDs, but any deterrent's better than none.)

Actually many town bids and local pcso circulate a flyer to stores with photos of persistent offenders. I have had one in every store I work in. Plus you get to know the regular ones and just stand at the door and they usually fuck off without anything as they know you are watching. In my current mall store, as opposed to the high street stores, we also call the mall security and they come down as well. They often radio us ahead so we can stop them at the doors.
We are also starting to use facial recognition so our hand held scanners now alert us when they enter. ( Proven shoplifters, who have stolen from.is in the past, very very strict rules on who can be added and only management can add to the system and it is over seen by central security teams for approval)

I’m afraid you are wrong. I have access to it.

No need for flyers its all online https://discagainstcrime.com/