Remember the election of police and crime commissioners in November 2012? One year on, have they been the answer to retail and business crime? Or anything?!
A dozen retail forums – for sectors from DIY, supermarkets and electricals to cafes, the supply chain and Ireland – are run by the consultancy ORIS. Organisers stress that it’s not about talking shops but about sharing problems – because while retailers are rivals on the high street, when it comes to shrinkage they face the same threats – and criminals. Hence the forums, to share information and to do lobbying for the loss prevention (LP) sector. So the Retail Fraud show at Leicester City FC stadium, pictured, heard on October 10.
Final mile
As the event chairman Prof Martin Gill pointed out, the two sides – police and retailers – see the other as unrealistic. Police face cuts; retailers pay taxes. There is the problem of ‘the final mile’; even if police forces and national retailers agree to work on crime, and evidence is packaged by retailers and presented to police, it’s not always taken to a prosecution. And as for online crime, Action Fraud is gathering crime reports from the public; but are police forces at all acting on the cases they are sent?! For all the interest PCC candidates showed when the ORIS forums approached them before the PCC elections, only seven of 41 PCCs responded to the forums afterwards. Only nine PCCs had business crime in their manifestos; and only three of those spoke specifically of retail crime. Of those PCCs that have lately responded to the forums, some replies provoked amusement in the audience at Leicester – one PCC pointed to cardboard police officers as a sign of good work; another felt that it was for him to motivate retailers to make more effort against crime. Rather than trying to gee up PCCs – who may be tempted to think most of how to satisfy voters, rather than businesses – the forums are looking to influence the new Association of PCCs. Martin Gregg, head of loss prevention at Peacocks, told the conference that the forums were looking to hold PCCs and police to a few, specific targets.
Worlds colliding
He spoke of ‘two different worlds colliding’ – that is, the police, and retailing; public and private sector. “A lot of time is spent blaming each other; there needs to be honesty and openness; there also has to be a genuine desire to understand each other’s problems.” As Martin Gregg added, crime was too big to expect police to deal with it by themselves. From the floor, Simon Gordon of Facewatch made the point that you could not expect police to arrest every thief – a point made by others on the day. To wait for an hour for a police officer to arrive to make an arrest was a waste of police and retailer time. Martin Gregg said that at some point police have to get involved. He raised the problem with online fraud from shops, complex and hidden, and even harder to get police interest in. Gregg said: “The reality is that police cannot turn up and arrest somebody who has stolen a T-shirt, but when we talk about more organised, cross-border crime, they [police] really do have to be involved. Retailers are joining the dots themselves.” And as Prof Martin Gill said from the chair, even if you do get business crime on the agenda of a PCC, what will be done?!
Who was there?
Besides the loss prevention people from the high street, it was interesting that some attended from the online retail sector: such as Mark Magnier of ebay, and Nic Heppenstall of Wowcher. Suppliers attending included Simon Chapman and Stuart Lodge of Lodge Services. LP people there included Colin Culleton, of Next; Steve Middleton, of Body Shop; Graham Watt, of The Co-operative Group; Robert Todd of Signet; and Mark Spedding and Clinton Johnson of Sport Direct. Also speaking at the annual event were Zuzana Crawford, asset protection investigator for ebay and Paypal, and Rob Wilcox, regional investigator for Aurora Fashion. They described a case of theft of branded clothing from a concession store, sold online, and how ebay and the retailer worked together to bring evidence to the police, and how ebay froze the Paypal accounts and arranged for banks to freeze the thieves’ bank accounts. Prof Joshua Bamfield the LP consultant and author, gave the results of the Axis Communications CCTV in retail survey. Noel Hennessy, head of business controls at Arnotts, described reducing shrinkage at the Dublin department store. Also speaking were David Pope of credit card validation software company Jumio; and on biometrics, Andre Delaforge, of Natural Security.
Winners
The evening before the conference saw a networking and awards dinner. Among the awards was one for LP director of the year, which went to Mick Phipps of Wilkinson’s; runner-up was Ady Houghton of Iceland. An LP team of the year went to American Golf; runner-up was Dixons.
About Martin Gregg
At Peacocks for more than eight years, and earlier at The Body Shop, he is vice-chair of the Retail Loss Prevention Fashion Forum.
About the event
Next year’s Retail Fraud awards evening runs in Leicester on October 8. Visit www.retailfraud.com. p
