11
Feb
2016
By Calvin at 16:11 GMT, 8 years ago
Here’s an interesting article in the Nottingham Post about shoplifting in Nottingham’s City Centre. The article lists the top ten shops to experience theft using the number of offences reported to the police by individual shops. Although one would expect the larger stores to experience greater numbers of thefts, clearly the list cannot be totally accurate since it relies on stores reporting the thefts and many shopkeepers and stores don’t bother.
Shoplifting has been a problem ever since goods for purchase were moved from behind the counter to the front. This increased sales, but at the same time increased opportunity for theft. Nobody, I’m sure, would wish to return to the 1930s when you had to stand at a counter and ask to be shown a selection of gloves/dresses/jackets etc but neither should we be shocked to learn that stores like Primark in Nottingham have reported 187 incidents of theft during the past year – and they’re just the ones they’ve detected; there were probably more.
The stores are doing what they can to fight back (Tags, CCTV, Store detectives), but it seems to me that this effort is more to ‘keep a lid on it’ than to eliminate the problem altogether, which is virtually impossible to do.
Shoe shops used to have the lowest level of shop lifting due to the fact that there was only one shoe of the pair on display, but even this has changed in some stores who now routinely display pairs of shoes, some of which inevitably get stolen - literally walking out of the store!.
When I first became a Crime Prevention Officer in Acton, West London, my colleague and I would give anti-shoplifting talks to the town's shop assistants during their once-a-week training sessions. We would do one or two of these 30 minute sessions each week, so this service was always very popular. During the talks that took place within the closed shop we would run through a list of do’s and don’ts and below are just a few of them that still have relevance today. Each shop was different and had different challenges, but there was always more the staff could do to reduce their problems.
- Greet people who enter the shop (so they know they’ve been seen)
- Try not to display the latest fashion lines at the entrance as they’ll be easier to steal by snatching. (It was not uncommon for a whole rail of items to be snatched in one go. The assailant would then run out of the store/shopping centre and jump into a waiting car)
- Try to display the most expensive items close to till points so they’re close to a member of staff
- Limit the number of items taken into the changing room, issuing numbered discs and check the individual rooms for tickets/tags as the customer exits
- Install CCTV and use it intelligently to watch over riskier items and capture evidentially useful images of person entering and leaving the store. A bank of CCTV monitors and or plenty of signage indicating that CCTV is in use will be helpful
- Identify which parts of the shop premises tends to lose most goods and try to keep a staff member in that location
- Report thefts to the police and have a policy to prosecute. This includes shoplifters and members of staff who have been caught stealing or aiding and abetting thieves in the store (don’t just sack them!)
- Join a Shop/Business Watch and be an active member by reporting suspicious behaviour and people
- Make use of technology - tags, chips etc
