North Yorkshire Police say they are making significant progress in tackling shoplifting, with detection rates for shoplifting increasing by 10 percentage points this year compared to last year.
Chief Constable Tim Forber stated that in the last 28 days, more than 50% of recorded shoplifting incidents on the Yorkshire coast have resulted in a detection. According to Forber, this places the force among the best performing police forces in the country.
As part of the force's ongoing drive to tackle retail crime, Deputy Chief Constable Scott Bisset has highlighted the force's efforts to improve how they recover CCTV footage, noting that some retailers have high-end systems with facial recognition capabilities. He said that a new system has been introduced allowing people to submit footage online.
DCC Bisset acknowledged that the ability to do so can be limited by the IT available to the retailer, but he said the force does not want to discount anyone from providing them with evidence.
The police say they are working in partnership with retailers to tackle retail crime. This includes shop watches around market towns and bringing retail policing and other partners together. According to Bisset, this approach of partnership working is seen as the answer to reducing retail theft. This is being done with a "keen edge around arresting suspects as we need to," Bisset added.
Chief Constable Tim Forber also addressed the perception among some retailers that the police are not concerned about shoplifting, stating that this is "very clearly not the case". He said that the number of offenders being arrested and the number of crimes being solved demonstrates the impact of the work being done.
Forber announced a retail crime symposium, led by ACC Ben Mosley, which will take place in the next month or two. Security and area managers from main stores will be invited to discuss the work that is being done, preventative measures, and the retail crime pack. According to Forber, the lowest return rates of retail packs tend to come from big supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons.
The Chief Constable said that working with those businesses is critical because the same offenders who are offending in the supermarkets are also offending in smaller businesses. He believes that increased reporting from the larger stores could deter offenders from coming into localities.
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