Supermarket bosses report a rise in middle class shoplifting (Image: Express)
England has gone from being a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of shoplifters with barely an eyebrow being raised.
While police find the time to investigate nine-year-old children for playground name-calling, organised crime gangs are clearing shelves without an officer even bothering to turn up to speak to the victims.
In the time it takes you to read this piece, 115 thefts will have been carried out.
A new report by the British Retail Consortium found there are 55,000 incidents a day, a 22% increase and a record high.
But it said six in ten retailers view the police response as poor and almost all said one of their main reasons for not reporting a crime is there is no point as nothing will happen if they do.
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It gets worse. In the last year, 45,000 violent incidents were recorded, with a weapon used in 25,000 of them, a 180% increase on the previous year.
Serious abuse of staff has gone up by 60% to 696,000 incidents.
Only a third of the violent and abusive cases were reported to police because there was a “lack of expectation that it would make any difference”.
Police turned up to just one in ten reports and only 2% secured a conviction.
Respondents to the BRC survey said shoplifters have become quicker to resort to abuse, threats and violence, do not appear to care if they injure a member of staff and taunt shopworkers, saying they cannot stop them.
They blame the increase on the lack of police action and say shoplifters have no fear of repercussions.
Many of the workers are on minimum wage or are small shop owners getting by on tiny profit margins.
Few people in power seem to care. Politicians and police chiefs have put it in the ‘too difficult box’.
Far easier to crackdown on someone for saying something off colour on social media than tackle the thugs wielding weapons as they steal to order.
But it turns out social media is also a way for victims to attract attention.
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Don’t bother ringing 999. Instead post on your accounts about how useless the police have been and they will turn up on your doorstep
Criminals targeted two designer handbag shops owned by Paige Mengers, 53, in 24 hours.
Despite the crooks coming armed with tools, cutting through the security wires and escaping with £15,000 worth of goods, police refused to attend the incidents.
Only after Mrs Mengers put up a video on criticising Surrey Police did she receive a visit from officers, who admitted that they were only bothering to attend because of the fuss she made on social media.
The situation is so dire, a former Scotland Yard detective has set up the country’s first private police force.
Retailers pay for patrols and TM Eye’s officers are promised to be on the scene within minutes and the firm has prosecuted hundreds of shoplifters.
As a junior reporter regularly dispatched to cover magistrates’ courts across the north west years ago, the shoplifting cases that cropped up tended to be wayward teens or drug addicts.
But besides the organised crime gangs who treat it as their new trade, shoplifting now seems to be considered so trivial that everyone is at it.
Well not quite. Not me, not you, but people who a few decades ago would have never dreamt of stealing.
Marks & Spencer chairman Archie Norman blames the middle classes.
Criminology professor Emmeline Taylor puts the rise partly down to the use of self-checkouts and calls the culprits “swipers” – seemingly well-intentioned patrons engaging in regular shoplifting.
She found that the middle classes were also buying stolen goods online, with premium products like manuka honey, olive oil, chocolates and expensive laundry tablets being snapped up.
One well-off mum wrote about her crime spree in a national newspaper this week and blamed it on being sad after the pandemic.
She was eventually caught and given a caution, which was the wake up call she needed to realise that walking out of a supermarket with a full trolley but failing to stop at the checkout to pay for it on the way was the wrong thing to do.
Shoplifting does not feel like a low level crime for the victims of it.
Police complain they do not have the resources but policing has always been about priorities.
It is time to get back to policing the streets instead of policing thoughts.