The Co-op is installing up to 200 secure kiosks in its supermarkets, locked cabinets for spirits bottles and AI technology to monitor self-checkouts after a 44 per cent rise in retail crime last year to almost a day. 1,000 events done.
The grocery retailer, which has more than 2,400 stores across the UK, said its undercover security guards detained 3,361 people in its stores last year for a range of offenses including theft, abuse and harassment, its staff said. Increase in physical attacks.
Despite spending £200 million on new security measures, including extra guards and an undercover team targeting crime hotspots, the supermarket group faced a 48 per cent rise in shoplifting incidents to around 298,000.
Matt Hood, managing director of the Co-op’s food business, said: “This is not some opportunistic shoplifter growing up. This is organized crime and robbery.
In some stores, he said, staff are experiencing two or three incidents a week of thieves jumping over tile counters to steal alcohol, cigarettes and lottery cards.
Such stores were deemed unprofitable until new security measures, such as kiosks with secure doors, were introduced, he said. Hood said the Co-op is not using a facial recognition system unlike other large chains.
He has joined other major retail bosses in calling for a new specific offense of assaulting a retail worker as five of the two detained by China guards still flee as police in an incident. Failed to participate.
“Those who are really organized can only be deterred by custodial sentences and the police. We need consequences,” he said.
“The thing that worries me more than anything is that we have colleagues who won’t bother to report. [incidents] As they know they will get no response.
“If you’ve detained someone who’s committed a crime and the police don’t come, you have to let them go. You can imagine how demotivating that is for the people working in the shop and How encouraging. [it is] For shopkeepers.”
The Co-op has highlighted that where serious incidents are prioritized, and co-operation with the police, the problem can be tackled.
Forces such as Essex, Nottinghamshire and Sussex worked with the Co-op to manage the arrests of 110 serious offenders last year, resulting in a total of 30 years’ custodial sentences and a further 60 years’ criminal behavior orders. . In addition, 16 offenders received some form of rehabilitation order.
Hood said: “Until these crimes become a police action, it will continue. It has been proven in Scotland that if you make assaulting a shopkeeper a specific offence, incidents go down. We have England. I need it to happen.
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Labor proposed an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill currently working its way through Parliament which would make assault on a retail worker a specific criminal offence, punishable by 12 months behind bars or £ 10,000 may be fined.
The government voted against the move, along with Policing Minister Chris Phillips, saying it could create an issue of “equality between retail workers and other public sector workers”.
Hood said he had seen “early signs of progress” from the government’s retail crime action plan, published in October, which included a commitment by police to prioritize attending shoplifting incidents involving shopkeepers. involving violence against or where a criminal has been detained by security guards.
The plan also includes the more controversial Project Pegasus, under which 10 of the country’s biggest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Boots and Primark, are handing over CCTV images to police, which they can use to identify them using facial recognition. will be driven by database using technology. Excessive or potentially dangerous individuals.
Some experts say technology such as self-checkout and the display of expensive goods on shelves, behind counters served by staff, have contributed to the problems.