Hampshire police bosses pledge zero-tolerance shoplifting crackdown

The News, Portsmouth

Hampshire’s police force has promised to crack down on shoplifting - warning offenders “we’re coming after you”.

Transcript

00:00 Donna Jones, Police and Crime Commissioner, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

00:07 And can you tell me a little bit about what's happening here today?

00:09 Yeah, so over the last few years people have been reporting to the police and to me as their Police and Crime Commissioner

00:15 that there has been an increase in shoplifting.

00:17 And of course this makes people in high streets feel unsafe in their local community when they see people blatantly shoplifting.

00:23 My job as Police and Crime Commissioner is to represent the public

00:26 and I've made it very, very clear that I will do everything in my power to tackle shoplifting

00:31 and to make sure that for the Chief Constable this is a priority for him and police officers across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

00:37 So today the Chief and I are here launching this new shoplifting taskforce,

00:41 sending a very clear message to criminals and also to organised crime gangs who are shoplifting to order

00:47 that you will be caught and you will be brought to justice and it's no longer going to be seen as a crime that the police do not respond to.

00:54 And what will this new strategy involve?

01:01 I'm Scott Chill, I'm the Chief Constable of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

01:04 That's brilliant. And can you give me an idea of the scale of shoplifting in Portsmouth?

01:10 I think we've all seen post-Covid shoplifting has increased significantly

01:13 and the public have been telling us that as well as our own recorded crime.

01:17 And what we've seen in the last year, which I'm actually pretty pleased about,

01:20 is a 40% increase in reporting across the county. So it's a really significant problem

01:24 but at least people are now reporting it and understanding that we're going to bid them to do something about it.

01:29 Great. And can you talk us through the plan that's been devised and that you're announcing today?

01:35 A number of months ago I made changes to the way that the force operated.

01:38 So we've got more dedicated officers in local communities working with businesses.

01:43 I've put more officers into neighbouring teams and I've got more proactive and covert police officers out there

01:48 targeting offenders. What we've also done is started to use the technology more effectively.

01:53 So facial recognition through CCTV images, through images that are captured by people

01:58 so that we can actually identify those offenders that are making a living out of this,

02:01 go and target them and get them before the court.

02:04 And since these changes have come in, what sort of feedback have you had from traders in Commercial Road

02:09 or in Portsmouth as a whole?

02:11 I know we've got a lot of work to do. I know that many of us in the public say,

02:14 "Well, what's the point in reporting it?" Hopefully they're starting to see more offenders brought to justice

02:18 and they feel confident having a local beat officer talking to them, engaging with them,

02:21 knowing who these people are. But also when you look at the conviction rate as well,

02:25 we've now increased the number of people that have been identified and brought to justice

02:29 up to 86% in the last year from where we were this time last year.

02:33 So that in itself means that we're making a difference.

02:35 Carry on like that, we'll really do our very, very best to try and bring this problem totally under control.

02:41 So we've been told that this shop is one of the most targeted by shoplifters.

02:46 So could you explain a little bit about the scale of shoplifting here?

02:49 We probably have at least 5 or 10 shoplifters in a day.

02:53 I don't know whether it's due just to the convenient area of the store

02:58 or the different outreaches in the area that sort of attract shoplifting people.

03:09 With the train station as well it's a quite easy exit for them, but we deal with it.

03:16 So how do you feel coming to work each day knowing that you're quite likely to have a number of shoplifters?

03:22 I think in the beginning it was very difficult. A lot of anxiety around coming to work.

03:26 You don't know what people will have on them, whether they're going to be aggressive shoplifters

03:30 or just the type that will leave when you ask. But the colleagues that are here, we manage.

03:37 How does shoplifting affect River Island here in Port Talbot?

03:41 Last year we got a lot of shoplifting. We were hit very badly when they come in.

03:47 They tend to come in in groups. They come in and they hit all of our handbags, all our stops at the back.

03:53 They will also come in and they will take whole fixtures out of the shop.

03:56 They will just pick up the arms of it and run out of the shop.

03:59 A lot of them know that they can't be touched. They know that we can't do anything about it.

04:03 Once they're outside of the shop there's nothing we can do.

04:06 They've got their own law of their own. They can do what they want basically.

04:10 It's massive in Portsmouth. I stand on the door all day. I watch the shoplifters.

04:15 I watch the high street. I watch them running in and out of H&M, stealing from there all day long.

04:20 It's just horrendous to be honest with you.

04:24 Sergeant Paul Marshall from the City 17 in Portsmouth.

04:28 Can you tell us a little bit about the scale of shoplifting in Portsmouth?

04:32 We have a real problem with prolific shoplifters in the city centre in particular.

04:37 And a lot of shops in different areas of Portsmouth such as Southsea and Northend.

04:43 It really, post Covid, there was a large increase in shoplifting.

04:53 And a lot of them are just brazen, blatant.

04:58 They just go in and clear the shelves. They don't even attempt to find their identities.

05:04 That's how they do it. They just need the stock to sell on, to buy drugs, food, whatever.

05:14 How much of your day to day work involves directly tackling shoplifting?

05:19 That's pretty much most of our work.

05:24 There is a certain amount of anti-social behaviour that goes on up Commercial Road.

05:29 We're using criminal behaviour orders to tackle that sort of anti-social behaviour.

05:39 We've got a couple in the pipeline at the moment where we're trying to ban perpetrators from Commercial Road.

05:48 [no audio]

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