Nigel Austin, UK & Ireland Sales Manager, Physical Security, Hexagon’s Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial division.
Last week, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) pleaded with UK shoppers to help retailers take a stand against verbal and physical violence directed towards shop workers.
Such is the scale of the situation, the BRC suggests that around 1,300 such incidents take place each day.
However, fundamental issues must be addressed in order for this worrying upward trend to be reversed.
First and foremost, there needs to be a stronger deterrent.
In the King’s speech, the UK government unveiled a new crime bill to reverse legislation from 2014 that gave a lesser punishment for the shoplifting of items worth less than £200.
This was significant given how shoplifting is at its highest level since police records began.
The Office of National Statistics has reported that 430,000 offences were committed in the last year.
This law change was accompanied by plans to make violence against shop workers a specific offence.
However, the strength and success of this legislation is dependent on the relationship between retail and the police and confidence that incidents will be investigated and prosecuted.
The BRC suggests that 60% of retailers believe the police response to be poor or very poor and, therefore, the ONS retail crime figures are (whilst staggeringly high) likely to be conservative.
The relationship is improving, and there are some productive initiatives underway, such as the Retail Action Plan and initiatives from the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC).
For example, the Safer Business Action Week that took place in October saw officers visiting high streets and shopping centres to talk about the work police forces are doing to make it easier to share evidence.
This issue of evidence, specifically CCTV and footage from body-worn video, has been a major factor in successful prosecutions.
The traditional method for exchanging video evidence has largely been a painstakingly slow, manual process involving officers visiting a store to review footage and saving it to a storage device to return to the station.
However, this can be complicated further if the retailer does not have the recording on-site, or the manager cannot access the recorder.
The NBCC is urging retail businesses to ensure their CCTV systems have the capability to upload and share CCTV footage electronically with the police to speed up investigations and identify offenders.
Over the past five years, the majority of police forces have started investing in systems to help them request and receive video footage electronically.
These are typically known as digital evidence management systems (DEMS) and digital asset management systems (DAMS).
Additionally, retail businesses can do a lot to improve the process themselves, including taking advantage of the capabilities of their video management systems (VMS) to improve how they access, edit, react and share video, whether it is managed in-store or from a central control room, to provide the police with the most comprehensive footage possible.
In a statement, the Chief Executive of the BRC, Helen Dickinson said: “While Christmas is an exceptionally busy time, any mistreatment of our colleagues will not be tolerated and we ask the public to stand with us in the fight against retail crime.”
“What our colleagues face on a daily basis is completely unacceptable.
“It is vital that the government sends a clear message and ensures the new standalone offence applies to all consumer-facing roles in retail.
“Together, we can deliver a safer Christmas for everyone and end the scourge of violence against retail workers.”
The situation cannot continue, and the steps taken in the past year offer a glimmer of hope that 12 months from now the BRC will not feel compelled to make such a public plea on behalf of shop workers.
Solving the evidence-sharing problem will go a long way to solving the bigger problem of retail crime.
