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