Police to attend every shoplifting incident with staff threat in ‘zero-tolerance’ plan

Ministers, police and retailers will attend a summit where police chiefs will reveal plans to crack down on the soaring number of shoplifting incidents.

According to The Sunday Times, police forces are expected to sign up to a new commitment to attend the scene of every shoplifting incident reported to include a threat of violence to store staff.

Security guards working in retail stores are also expected to be issued with new guidance on detaining shoplifters under a citizen’s arrest to ensure there is a blanket policy in different shops across the country.

The meeting will reportedly be attended by: Amanda Blakeman, chief constable of North Wales police, who also leads on retail crime for the National Police Chiefs’ Council; Katy Bourne, head of retail crime for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; City of London police; the UK’s 13 biggest retailers; the Association of Convenience Stores; and the British Independent Retailers Association.

A government source told The Sunday Times: “The reason this is so important is because if we don’t take hard, decisive action now, it could continue to escalate as it has in some American cities like San Francisco.

“We’re determined it won’t happen here and we clamp down on it very hard. That’s the reason for gripping it so decisively. Launching this plan at Number 10 will show how seriously we are taking this.”

Shoplifting offences recorded by police soared by a quarter in the year to June to 365,164 – a record high – but the rate of cases solved has fallen, with just one in eight cases leading to a suspect being charged.

The true scale of the crime is estimated to be far higher, with retailers reporting 8 million incidents the previous year, according to research by the British Retail Consortium, costing stores a combined £1bn.

The meeting comes after retailers including Tesco, John Lewis Partnership and Sainsbury’s banded together to fund Project Pegasus, a scheme that will allow them to run CCTV images of shoplifting offences provided by retailers through the Police National Database.

According to the report, a policing source said: “They will analyse data from all forces from stores and crunch it into actionable packages to hand to police forces to make arrests in the new year.”

Another source said: “This is the first time we’ll be tackling shoplifting from a national perspective and [it] will enable us to work across boundaries, which is crucial because that’s how organised crime groups are targeting retailers.”