Shoplifting severity in Portsmouth

The News, Portsmouth

Hampshire police sergeant Paul Marshall reveals the scale of shoplifting in Portsmouth.

Transcript

00:00 Sergeant Paul Marshall from the City Centre team in Portsmouth.

00:03 Okay, can you tell us a little bit about the scale of shoplifting in Portsmouth?

00:06 We have a real problem with prolific shoplifters in the city centre in particular and a lot of

00:14 shops in different areas of Portsmouth such as Southsea and Northend.

00:18 It's really, post Covid, it really, there was a large increase in shoplifting

00:29 and a lot of them are just brazen, blatant, they just go in and clear the shelves.

00:36 They don't even attempt to find their identities, that's how they do it, they just need

00:42 stock to sell on, to buy drugs, food, whatever.

00:49 And how much of your day-to-day work involves directly tackling shoplifting?

00:55 That's pretty much most of our work. There is a certain amount of anti-social behaviour that

01:02 used to go on a commercial road where we're using criminal behaviour orders to tackle

01:12 that sort of anti-social behaviour. We've got a couple in the pipeline at the moment where

01:18 we're trying to ban perpetrators from a commercial road.

01:24 Right, okay. And from speaking to shop owners or just people who work in the shops that are

01:30 targeted, what have they said that they would like to see done about it?

01:34 I mean, obviously when the unit started, because during Covid there was virtually no one in the

01:42 city centre, historically, obviously I've worked for Hampshire Conservatory for over 30 years,

01:47 the city centre was quite a large unit, there was a sergeant and eight police officers on it.

01:53 And when it started about 18 months ago again, there was myself and two officers,

01:59 it's now expanded to myself and four officers. So the more people we've got, the more we can do.

02:05 We are pretty much, you know, day-to-day my officers are up there and they'll deal with

02:12 offences as they see them, as repulsive shoplifters. We work in conjunction with

02:19 the businesses, the Crime Reduction Partnership, we have their shop watch radios so we know what's

02:24 going on when we're on duty. And we'll also tackle reports of the prolific shoplifters

02:31 which we target and our main aim is to get them into police custody and hopefully

02:40 remand them in custody. For example, over the last 12 months we've dealt with shoplifters who have

02:50 committed between 20 and 30 offences, one was 31 offences and the total cost to, this was co-ops

03:05 and a couple of other stores like Sainsbury's, was in excess of £6,000 of stock from co-op.

03:13 We work in conjunction with and collaborate with SWL which is the co-op security team

03:20 who provides an evidential package that we can then use to get the rest of these people

03:26 and put them before the courts.

03:28 My name is Daisy, I'm a customer training manager here at Sainsbury's in Guildford Walk.

03:35 And so we've been told that this shop is one of the most targeted by shoplifters,

03:40 so could you explain a little bit about the scale of shoplifting here?

03:43 We probably have at least 5% shoplifters in a day and I don't know whether it's due just to the

03:50 convenient area of the store or the different outreaches in the area that sort of attract

04:01 shoplifters. With the train station as well it's quite an easy exit for them but we deal with it.

04:10 So how do you feel sort of coming to work each day knowing that you're quite likely to have the

04:15 number of shoplifters? I think in the beginning it was very difficult, a lot of anxiety about

04:20 coming to work, you don't know what people will have on them, whether they're going to be

04:24 aggressive shoplifters or just the type that will leave when you ask, but the colleagues that are

04:29 here we manage. And what sort of items do you most commonly see targeted by shoplifters?

04:37 The most common items are meat, cheese, alcohol, coffee.

04:42 And can you tell us a little bit about how the police is kind of working with the shop to deal

04:49 with this? So back in December the police set up a PCSO unit in the city centre which has really

04:57 made a big impact in crime reduction and us at the store we've liaised really well with them

05:04 and the disc crime radios with the Solent radio system and together we've really done a great job.

05:15 Great and is there more that you would like to see done about this?

05:20 I don't think there's realistically a lot more that we could do at the current time,

05:27 I think it's just about having bodies in the streets and I mean as a company bodies on the

05:32 shop floor, we've got our body worn cameras, we're just doing the best we can. And I suppose

05:38 asking just out of interest have you had any incidents today so far? Yes I've had meat stolen

05:44 today, coffee and alcohol.

05:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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