Cherry Wilson and Jim Connolly
BBC news surveys
Look at the time looking for display thieves targeting a telephone store in the center of London, December 2024
Retail crime is “out of control” and display thieves perform increasingly cheeky and violent theft acts because they are not afraid of any consequence, an industry organization at the BBC told.
In some cases, offenders openly give off items of articles to the view of customers and store employees – a tactic sometimes known as the “suicide kamikaze” flight name.
During the 12 months to September of last year, customer flight incidents in the United Kingdom increased from 3.7 million to 20.4 million and cost retailers 2 billion pounds Sterling.
The figures have been published today in the annual crime of the British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents more than 200 large retailers.
According to the BRC, violence and abuse against workers have also increased by 50%, with more than 2,000 incidents of this type recorded on average per day.
He indicates that his investigation was based on a sample of retailers representing more than 1.1 million employees and a turnover of more than 194 billion pounds sterling.
In a “suicide bomber” incident last month in a telephone store in Oxford Street in London, two men spent a few minutes to lower a phone stand in front of customers and store employees.
It is believed that the telephone support contained dummy phones which could then have been sold online to without distrust customers, made believe that they were buying the real thing.
Metropolitan police said the police responded to the incident and made a search in the region. They could not locate the suspects, despite the fact that they were captured on video. An investigation has since been launched.
Helen Dickinson du BRC: The crime of the store is “scandalous and out of control in many regions of the country”
The display flight is often motivated by organized gangs and prolific delinquents who fly on order, according to Helen Dickinson, director general of the BRC.
She said that the offenders became more daring because “they do not see that there are necessarily consequences”.
“It’s scandalous and out of control in many regions of the country.”
Social media is filled with display flight videos, sometimes in front of the store workers and security agents who do not seem to intervene.
Dickinson said that store staff are often invited not to intervene because they run a risk of being attacked.
The owner of the store, Amit Puntambekar, said that he had been struck in the face by a young woman whom he suspected of having stolen £ 75 vapes in his store Cambridgeshire earlier this year.
He thinks that the number of violent incidents has worsened in the past three years and has made him consider leaving the company, which has been part of his family for almost 40 years.
“I don’t want to die at work,” he said. “When your staff is threatened with a hammer, when someone threatens to kill you who lives near your shop and the police don’t take it seriously, what is it for?”
The criminals know that the law is a gentle display flight, said Mr. Puntambekar, so the suspects carry out crimes in sight.
The Cambridgeshire police said that a 17 -year -old girl had been accused of common assault and theft in a store following the incident and would appear in court on February 5.
Amit Puntambekar was struck in his face in his store by a presumed display thief
The MITIE installation management company provides 10,000 security agents in the British retail sector. He said 10% of them were injured in the exercise of functions in 2024.
According to its director of security, Jason Towse, display thieves have become more intrepid because police resources have become more focused on “large -scale” crime.
“The main problem to explain why people use this” suicide bomber “approach is to scare colleagues and scare staff,” he said. “They also know that the police ‘response is not what it was.”
Security agents have no more powers than other citizens to apprehend the display thieves. But Mr. Towse says they are trained in the best way to identify and respond to problems. They can also act as a visible means of deterrent and share data and evidence with the police.
We asked 10 large retailers who were the policies of their staff to deal with the display thieves making a violent or aggressive flight.
Several have said that the security of staff and customers was a priority and added that they had invested in safety measures, including video surveillance, the cameras carried on the body and an increase in security agents.
The display flight adds £ 133 to the cost of the purchase bill for a cleaning in the average United Kingdom each year, according to the Center for Retail Research.
In 2023, the government launched a program that established advice for the police to tackle the issue – including the prioritization of violent incidents or when a offender was captured. He also launched an intelligence sharing partnership between the retailers, the home office and the police services – focused on the fight against display gangs and prolific delinquents.
Tesco workers defend the doors while the display thieves try to penetrate
In response to the BRC investigation, the Minister of Home Office Dame Diana Johnson described the increase in the crime of “completely unacceptable” stores.
It has also repeated a government commitment to provide a new specific offense for the assault of retail workers – something that the retail industry has been calling since 2020.
This would help to clarify the size of the problem and allow the collection of statistics, explains the BRC.
Helen Dickinson says that the latest record flight levels should serve as a “alarm clock” to the government and the police.
“The fear of consequences is simply not there and I think that is why we must see more resources and more concentration by the police,” she said.
Jason Towse says there is more work to do, but thinks that the measures taken in the industry are starting to generate results.
“In the end, when the display thieves are starting to see the levels of consequences more and more we see it today … It will really change the tide.”
