A couple who run one of Tenby’s busiest stores have highlighted the impact retail crime and shoplifting has on small local businesses, telling BBC’s Newsnight programme that such matters are not a ‘victimless’ crime and should have stronger ‘consequences’.
Vince and Fiona Malone who took the helm at Tenby Stores & Post Office back in 2014 spoke to Newsnight presenter Victoria Derbyshire to explain how theft had cost them a total of £26,000 last year, with shoplifting sometimes occurring daily at the premises.
“It’s an horrific number, that when we worked it out, lead us to say that we’ve got to do something different, we’ve got to break this!” explained Vince.
CCTV of shoplifters caught in the act at the store which sits opposite the town walls on South Parade, was shared with the show, with Fiona detailing the AI technology called x-hoppers that they have decided to install, which tracks and manages people as they move around the shop, so that if they make a suspicious gesture, it pings up a little video on a mobile phone, allowing the management to immediately take action.
“We run the business for the community. We’re a post office as well, and if we were to close, the town would have nowhere to do its banking,” said Fiona.
Vince said that a total of 32 cameras are circulated around the inside of the store, which has allowed them to be able to identify shoplifting better.
“The trouble we’re having is that we are finding the shoplifters, and we’re passing that information onto the police, but these people are coming back again and again, because we’re not seeing that there’s any consequences for their actions,” he remarked.
“So we as a society and as an industry need to look at how we deal with this.”
On August 9 of this month, Vince shared a post on social media documenting an assault on him the previous day, sharing with the store’s followers on Facebook how ‘angry’ he was at the level of physical and verbal abuse retailers have to put up with.
He told Victoria details of the assault, where the shoplifter who had stolen from the store in the morning, was caught on CCTV, yet came back in at midday and stole again!
Fiona added that shoplifting and theft has become too easy for people, as they think its a victimless crime.
©Video/Photo: BBC
Vince and Fiona Malone who took the helm at Tenby Stores & Post Office back in 2014 spoke to Newsnight presenter Victoria Derbyshire to explain how theft had cost them a total of £26,000 last year, with shoplifting sometimes occurring daily at the premises.
“It’s an horrific number, that when we worked it out, lead us to say that we’ve got to do something different, we’ve got to break this!” explained Vince.
CCTV of shoplifters caught in the act at the store which sits opposite the town walls on South Parade, was shared with the show, with Fiona detailing the AI technology called x-hoppers that they have decided to install, which tracks and manages people as they move around the shop, so that if they make a suspicious gesture, it pings up a little video on a mobile phone, allowing the management to immediately take action.
“We run the business for the community. We’re a post office as well, and if we were to close, the town would have nowhere to do its banking,” said Fiona.
Vince said that a total of 32 cameras are circulated around the inside of the store, which has allowed them to be able to identify shoplifting better.
“The trouble we’re having is that we are finding the shoplifters, and we’re passing that information onto the police, but these people are coming back again and again, because we’re not seeing that there’s any consequences for their actions,” he remarked.
“So we as a society and as an industry need to look at how we deal with this.”
On August 9 of this month, Vince shared a post on social media documenting an assault on him the previous day, sharing with the store’s followers on Facebook how ‘angry’ he was at the level of physical and verbal abuse retailers have to put up with.
He told Victoria details of the assault, where the shoplifter who had stolen from the store in the morning, was caught on CCTV, yet came back in at midday and stole again!
Fiona added that shoplifting and theft has become too easy for people, as they think its a victimless crime.
©Video/Photo: BBC
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NewsTranscript
00:00So, we're a small shop, 1,500 square foot, we have 32 cameras in the building.
00:05And since you put those in, has shoplifting reduced?
00:10We've seen a marked decrease, we've been able to identify shoplifting better.
00:16The trouble we're having is that we are finding the shoplifters, we are passing that information
00:21on to the police, but these people are then coming back again and again and again.
00:27We're not seeing that there's any consequences for their actions, and this is what we would
00:31like to see.
00:33As a father, with my children, I say there's consequences to your actions, and we're not
00:39seeing that.
00:41We've got the technology there, we can identify when problems are happening, and when you
00:46see the videos, some of these people are really brazen.
00:49It doesn't matter what you do, they're going out of the building.
00:53We need to look at how we, as a society, as an industry, deal with this.