To think that shoplifting should be taken seriously by the police and public?

[ScarySpinster]

I used to work in retail. The police would rarely come out for a shoplifter, even if it was £1000s of pounds.

My local village shop may have to close because of teenagers regularly shoplifting. It's just not profitable for them to stay open with the losses they have.

Looking at the bigger picture, shoplifting raids are taking place regularly in London, and all the big cities, with the people involved rarely being prosecuted.

I think that we need to take this crime much more seriously. I don't want to live in a world where there are no repercussions for bad behavior. Because where will this stop? Will burgarly and mugging start to become okay next?

People nicking a sandwich isn't what current climate shoplifting is really like though.

Our last successful one before we cleared the shelves of steal-ables was for over £100.

Shoplifting used to be a very passive criminals choice of crime, and they nearly always rolled over and started crying and giving it the sympathy story when you caught them. Now people come in, often 2-3 at a time, grab one of your baskets and fill it with the most expensive thing they can find and will then fight you for it if you try and stop them. I got into a full blown fight with one on a tag after he punched my wife, he also assaulted me, broke our door, smashed some stock and kicked another member of staff, spat on us all and was carrying drugs. When he realised we were overpowering him he tried to gauge my eyes. The police did actually attend for this but that was after me and my wife had to pin a fucking nutter to the floor for half an hour. The police were not keen to arrest and wondered if we'd accept an apology. We weren't by this person was released NFA. Despite being on a tag which presumably had immediate sanctions

Now all our high value items are upstairs and normal customers have to ask for them, it's pathetic

OneTC

Bizarre - how come he was released NFA? I assume both of you gave statements and there was CCTV.

Numerous offences he should have been changed with - and thefts like this should always be prosecuted and i would expect the police to attend as an emergency.

I am just trying to show a comparison between other 'low value' thefts - which all do mount up. Should we prosecute for all thefts no matter what the value is?

Nobody is ringing them in. And they are very rare, and such low value that not only are they not worth pursuing by the police we also don't really take any measures to stop people taking sandwiches, like I said upthread if we found you stealing food food we'd likely give it to you and direct you to the local food bank we contribute to. But that isn't what many people are stealing. They steal multiples of luxury items to sell

OneTC
But that isn't what many people are stealing. They steal multiples of luxury items to sell

And should be prosecuted all the time.

But as I said earlier - we need to change the judicial process to make it quicker and more efficient to do so.

We've been assaulted multiple times, have had knives pulled on us, have given the police story boarded CCTV footage of any crime they'd actually attend for and in the hundreds of reported crimes we've been involved in, including multiple burglaries has resulted in a total one prosecution. When it went to court the police had lost the footage.

I've been assaulted and had the same person come back about 2 hours after being arrested, with a mate, to attack me. The police didn't even come back.

We are in a very desirable bit of London btw

So why have the said that the prosecutions are failing?

Have you taken up you right for a case review each time?

And yeah I agree the process needs changing.

All the people that do the crime in our area are 100% known to the police, and to us, for years. We've got pet names for our most prolific offenders. The police know their names and addresses because they arrest and release them so frequently. For multiple offences ranging from petty to more serious.

Crime stats show that it's these people that cause a disproportionate amount of the crimes in their area and these are the people that need to be targeted. We don't need to target 2.50 sandwich stealers and there will always be some element of theft you don't detect, but I reckon if you took about 20 people in our local area out of circulation it'd change crime stats in the area hugely

Most certainly. The police have been shrugging their shoulders for so long. It’s theft FGS - since when did it become OK to ignore it?

OneTC
but I reckon if you took about 20 people in our local area out of circulation it'd change crime stats in the area hugely

I couldn't agree more with you.

In our area, we have these people as targets - and you get assigned to one of them per set of shifts. So (when possible) you will park outside their address, knock on their door, follow them around (even if they are not currently wanted) etc etc - just to disrupt them. If they are involved in any crime, no matter how small (so your £2.50 theft) they will be arrested - even if it just takes them off the street for the night. Gather as much intel on them as possible (sightings, clothing etc )

By one prosecution I mean one person that made it to court and didn't get NFAd by the police or deemed unfit to go to the CPS.

We've been doing this for nearly 30 years, we have engaged with the local force, our various MPs over the years and have generated a number of complaints. We also have a business to run and only so much time to dedicate to this part of it. Now we just report them and burn the CCTV and keep it, but now we've just got loads of CCTV that no one is ever going to look at.

More recently they haven't attended for active burglaries and left my partner's 80+ year old father to check the burglarized property himself despite no one knowing if the guy was still inside or not.

Well that is clearly wrong and you and your fellow businesses need to fight against it

I would have thought that if a £2.50 sandwich got any police response at all, the appropriate action would be out of court disposal (a police caution might be appropriate).

So the question is where do we draw the line? Frankly £100 is too high (never mind the £200 in Scotland). How about £20? You're starting to talk about higher value goods then (by supermarket standards anyway).

You can only caution of give an out of court disposal if the person admits to the theft - so if they deny it, what do we do next?

If you draw the line at £20 - does that mean that people who steal £15 of goods are just let off and the police do not bother with them at all?

What is then stopping them from doing a tour of the town stealing £15 in each shop?

Sadly it comes down to the basic issue of the robber knowing they are doing wrong - and caring about the consequences. You could put a billion pounds of resources a day into shoplifting policing, but if a million people were all stealing every day, you’d never touch the sides of it.

My granny, who had lived her whole life in a (dreary) midlands town, started being robbed about 20 years ago, such that the council came and put iron bars on all her windows. Children would try climbing in, or forcing the bars, and as for opening the front door - they would just invade. What sort of mentality do these kids have? People used to be terrified of their parents and authority, now they don’t give two f*s.

I've just seen PMQs and even though Rishi Sunak is sent the questions in advance so someone can prepare answers for him it was pretty dire. And he said something that even I know is untrue (that Labour hasn't raised this before.)

Keir Starmer employed a broken record technique, listing schools that were in Labour's school rebuilding programme that was cancelled by the Tories in 2010 that have STILL not been fixed.

The Tory front bench heckled and the back benches roared but you can see they know they're not getting away with it anymore. The chickens are coming home to roost and the Tories don't look like they can be bothered to go through the motions of pretending to govern.

It was all so much easier when they could just give millions to developers to make fake hospitals in exhibition centres and give millions to Michelle Mone for useless PPE and claim to have generously funded the NHS

Sorry! Wrong thread!

The police are being unbelievably appalling over this shop lifting issue. Criminals are literally looting shops. This has happened since people with degrees were employed, too gutless to deal with violent criminals. We need ex-forces people not woke whimps. Shops in some areas will shut and then there will be no shops left to loot, or law abiding people to buy food

TodayInahurry
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I agree - but you need to increases the resources or make the process a lot more simplified.

Oh lord, we got us a live one