Shop workers fear confronting thieves - manager

**Shop workers fear confronting thieves - manager**

Harry Delves said retail workers could face threats and abuse from aggressive shoplifters

Retail staff are afraid to confront shoplifters, according to a supermarket manager who says employees are dealing with high levels of abuse and intimidation.

Harry Delves, who runs Tuffins supermarket in Craven Arms, Shropshire, said workers have been threatened and verbally abused by thieves, making retailers reluctant to ask staff to step in.

"It would have have to take an incident of quite a serious nature to get them interested," he said, referring to police responses to shoplifting reports.

West Mercia Police said it treated all theft offences seriously.

Like many retailers, Tuffins has put in place measures to combat theft, including a security guard, CCTV covering every aisle and a connection to a national database of known shoplifters.

Delves said the system, called Facewatch, had helped cut the number of thefts at the store.

Even with those measures, he said he believed cost-of-living pressures were helping drive the problem.

"It's pushing people to commit crime in order to make their way," he said.

Delves said theft was hurting retailers' finances at a time when many businesses were already under strain.

"Retailers are struggling to make enough money to employ enough people, so it's only having an impact on the economy," he said.

He said known offenders who were spotted entering the store were politely asked to leave, but dealing with more determined thieves could be far more difficult.

"Unfortunately, when you have people who are aggressive and have come into the store for specific reasons and are going to take something irrespective of someone telling them what to do, it's very hard to address that," he said.

"We wouldn't ask someone to address a member of the community directly because it could be dangerous to them."

Delves said training staff to challenge shoplifters also involved risks.

"The last thing we want to do is to encourage them to do something that might put them in danger," he added.

Although none of his employees have been physically attacked, he said staff had faced threats and verbal abuse.

"A lot of people have got a certain amount of anger over all sorts of issues and they take it out on people in shops sometimes," he said.

"What is wrong with the country is a bigger question."

Delves said some retailers felt they were being pushed more and more to handle security themselves because police resources were stretched.

"It's been harder and harder to get their attention," he said.

But Insp Rich Jones, who is responsible for neighbourhood policing in north Shropshire, said it was a misconception that the force did not investigate lower-value thefts.

"That's not the case," he said.

"Any theft is a theft, so anything reported to us allows us to build that picture up of who may be targeting the stores and how much we can deal with them."

He said collecting reports helped officers build cases against repeat offenders.

"I'd much prefer putting an offender in front of the courts with all the offences they'd committed rather than just one or two, knowing full well they'd potentially done more in that town," he said.

However, Jones acknowledged police needed to work closely with retailers to tackle the issue and said shoplifting had historically been under-reported.

"It's been an under-reported offence for a number of years," he added.