Police need to do more to stop theft - shopkeepers
- Published
Retailers in a town have called for police to do more to prevent shoplifting.
The owners of the two small businesses in Towcester, Northamptonshire, said thefts often went unpunished and police response times were too slow.
Sawsan Gamgoum, owner of jewellery shop Flair Designer Wear, said: "Five weeks after we opened, we had a break-in and they took everything. It was heart-breaking. Nothing came of it."
Northamptonshire Police said it had seen an increase in reporting and detection rates for shop theft.
'Need to be stopped'
Last year, a House of Lords inquiry found there were more than 443,000 incidents of shop theft recorded by police in England and Wales in the year to March 2024 – the highest ever since records began 20 years ago.
Although, the inquiry estimated there were more likely about 17 million incidents annually because so many went unreported by victims.
Ms Gamgoum described an incident in October 2024 where a man stole £400 worth of jewellery from a cabinet and another time where someone stole her new phone worth £1,000.
After calling police, she was given a crime number but she said the case was never followed up.
The business owner said she now had a cheap phone to feel safer.
"I don't think there's enough punishment to stop people from hurting small businesses, they think they can get away with it," she said.
"Sometimes you feel it's not worth calling the police.
"There are more serious crimes, but these people need to be stopped."
Christine Hedges, proprietor of Creations of the Heart, a lingerie and accessories shop in the town, has faced similar experiences.
"[Thieves] tend to come in pairs... one stands by the door and the other walks around the shop.
"You do get a bit worried, with the way knife crime is, you have to be very careful so if they do pinch anything, you just have to let them go. But the police presence is quite slow in the area.
"I'd like a quicker response to anything you're getting in touch with."
A spokesperson for Northamptonshire Police said the force had seen an increase in both "our reporting and detection rates" for shop theft since the formal launch of its dedicated retail crime team last year.
They said that historically, shop theft reporting across Towcester was low, but encouraged anyone who had "suffered any form of retail crime to make a report to us".
Speaking to BBC Radio Northampton about the force's performance across the county, Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet said: "We are now the fifth-highest in outcomes for retail theft [in the country] which I think is something to be pleased about in terms of going in the right direction."
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