Shoplifting - have public scuffles with other customers become a thing??

[FurCoatNoKnickz]

Twice in the last week, I’ve witnessed members of the public stepping in to stop shoplifting, with pushes and scuffles breaking out. I had to call the police. It felt like shoppers are starting to get fed up, butt in, shout things, physically prevent people, push shoplifters and even scuffle.

Are other people noticing this elsewhere?

All right Nigel, we get it.

Or do I mean Honest Bob Jenrick? 🤔

When I visited California some of the shops in the more deprived areas had a lot of their stuff locked away behind glass counters. This was in places like Target, Walmart, etc. You had to ring a buzzer and a staff.member would supposedly come along and unlock it for you so you could get the item you wanted. We ended up just walking out without buying things we needed because we'd wait ten minutes for a staff member and then just give up. I presume things will go the same way in this country before long.

Here's an article about it at Target www.businessinsider.com/target-says-shoppers-happy-items-locked-up-dismisses-complaints-2023-11

But they don’t even turn up to arrest anyone a lot of the time!

Calm down! Aunt Sally wants a police state, hope no one rounds up Worzel as an un-documented field worker, and ships him off to the re-education camp.

I think we'll see a continuation of the trend for online ordering/reservation and home deliveries of groceries, household items, clothes, takeaways, etc., and we'll end up with no shops as such, they'll become warehouses for home delivery distribution or more "click and collect" where you wait in the car park collection points or there'll be "front desk counters" to collect your pre-ordered stuff.

Well there are already Amazon shops whereby you enter your Amazon account details into the entrance before you are allowed in. Cameras track your ever move and anything removed from the shelf is debited to your account. Of course this is prey to on line fraud but I bet they suffer far fewer losses. I imagine they will also introduce either finger print recognition or eye recognition in the too distant future too.

Trusted? Not the way I see it

I have a job, and that job is not packing shopping for greedy supermarkets.

They should staff shops properly

I work in retail. About 3 months ago, we had a well known shoplifter steal from us, and 3 other branches of the company I work for and other stores, over about 4 weeks before the police arrested him, probably took around £3,000 in goods possibly more in that time. All he got was a £150 fine. Not his first fine. No doubt he will be at it again soon. Other shoplifters have had banning notices but some just ignore them and they carry on.

It’s not a totally terrible idea actually - automate a lot of the packing to a more efficient warehouse area and it could be quite convenient. Not great for employment, I expect… though this is going to happen in lots of areas anyway.

I don’t want security guards on the door of Greggs

Gregg's have already started moving the products behind the counter in some areas where shoplifting was rife, so you have to ask the assistant for them, who will presumably only hand the goods over once you've paid for them.

I just hope this doesn't put staff at risk, if violent, determined thieves threaten them or worse.

It's what we used to have, but shoppers didn't want to pay for it, so started using cheaper supermarkets instead!

Yes, at least that's one way of dealing with it: get people's card details and have them pre-authorise payment for all items that leave the store with them.

Only problem, though, is if people use stolen bank cards and fake personal details and then get to go on a free shopping spree.

Also, I can well see thieves putting small, high-value items into honest customers' bags/trolleys, so that they get charged for them, and then deftly removing them once they've left the store.

Alternatively, the thieves might not even bother doing that and just reason that, instead of the goods inside the store being available for stealing, it's now the goods that have come out of the store with honest customers who have paid for them; so this could seriously put ordinary people - especially elderly and vulnerable ones - at risk.

@MatildaMovesMountains - do you not think there is a problem? Are all the shoplifters just desperately trying to feed a hungry family and forced to steal a loaf of bread? Are all the shops - large or small - just greedy and can well afford to lose stock?

Should we all nod approvingly when someone jumps the turnstiles on the tube, as they’re sticking it to the system? Throwing rubbish out of their car window? So what - everyone does it.

Pick-pocketing - tourists deserve it - they should be more careful? Mugging - well, your own fault for being out after dark. Sexual assault? Shouldn’t tempt men. Murder? You shouldn’t have upset the perpetrator - they have rights you know.

😡

Did I say that? Any of that? 🤷‍♀️

Would that be the same honest Bob who didn’t immediately report a tube passenger for openly stating g he was carrying a knife?

Indeed - and who fiddles his expenses and breaks the rules when it suits him and the price is right ✅️ 😉

I think people are just getting sick of it to be honest. I think the best way to stop a lot of shoplifting is publicly shame them. I work in a shop and it's not the people you expect who are shop lifting its middle aged women, nhs workers, teachers etc and it's not because they can't afford it, it's because they think they can get away with it. If these people knew their faces would be publicly put on Facebook each week I guarantee they would stop. Instead what happens is oh I forgot about all them hidden under there sorry, or oh I didn't scan that I thought I had. Or my kid was messing about with the scanner so I didn't realise £90 worth of stuff wasn't scanned. Or I was going to pay that separately after.

People are thinking: if the police and government won’t tackle crime, we will.

Police have been given new guidelines suggesting they can search womens homes for abortion drugs and even their mobile phones for internet searches, messages to family and friends and health apps if a pregnancy loss is unexpected.
Between 1861 when abortion was made illegal and November 2022 with updates to the law in between just three women were prosecuted for procuring an illegal abortion in Great Britain. Yet the number of women subjected to the trauma of these investigations has risen sharply. Around 100 women have faced investigations since 2020. A breach of privacy which is enshrined in Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

For every woman who ends up in court at least 10 more are subjected to prolonged police investigations according to abortion providers.

Ive copied this out from the paper copy but here is the whole thing for anyone with a Readly account.

https://gb.readly.com/magazines/woman/2025-06-03/6836d0c7eeb04ebdc0894d0d?srsltid=AfmBOoov8OFys60YBElhNn6YaB4TPD3s82vP1N3WdNQqImYJe6xf8qe0

More fool they

The police don't always need to arrest to deal with it, though - they can prosecute without arrest, which may look like they let them go to someone who doesn't know the alternative ways to prosecute.

Having them in the police cells is not enough of a deterrent anyway; the sentencing from the courts should be the deterrent, but still, this is also not enough to stop them.

Shoplifting should be something someone should be ashamed of commiting, the same with many other issues - some of which of a much lower level but sometimes society doesn't always challenge and stand up against it for various reasons and I can understand some of those reasons (fear of violence/backlash etc) but this also gives the impression that society doesn't care enough to pull people up before it gets bad (Broken window theory it think it's called).

There is also the issue of low numbers of police and demand across all policing increasing, but with the expectation that they should still do something, it is an issue for the whole of the judicial system and wider society.

I agree that shoplifting is getting more brazen; there just isn't the capacity to crack down on it effectively unless something else gives.

Why sometimes it's ok to speak up and do the right thing. Have you seen them social experiment videos online where kids are being kidnapped or men are spiking women's drinks and some people just look at their feet and do nothing. Then their are the amazing people who actually speak out. If you was being robbed in the street would you want help or would you want everyone to just walk past twiddling their thumbs.

Shoplifting is morally wrong and the people that do it are reprehensible. People who try to stop it should be applauded.

Of course I'd want someone to speak up or even intervene physically - the law treats the use of force very differently if it's a) proportionate and b) used to stop harm to another person. Using force or violence to intervene in shoplifting is not legally justified. Shouting is fine, violence is not.