Guarding

Retail support: ‘little acorn’

by Mark Rowe

In our May 2013 print issue we reported a private security company’s work in Manchester offering a ‘retail support unit’ to some of the city centre’s retailers. A year on, we’re invited back. Mark Rowe reports.

The seminar by Securitas in Oldham Street just off Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester was one of those occasions where what was said wasn’t the most important – although it was interesting and even historic in UK private security. The four speakers to introduce the ‘retail support unit’ (RSU) to retailers of the northern quarter were, pictured left to right, from the contract security firm, Paul King, area director, and Lindsay Batoryk, branch manager; Rob Dyson, business crime reduction manager at CityCo, which manages the city centre; and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Chief Insp Gareth Parkin. The fact that the man in charge of policing the city centre spoke – and did not dash off at once, but stayed until after the event proper and talked to at least one retailer – spoke volumes about official blessing of Securitas’ retail security offering. Now this is quite a change from GMP’s – shall we say – cautious response to what Securitas were trying to do a year ago. And that was of a piece with the police’s historic suspicion of private security offering a police-style service. Speaking to Professional Security beforehand, Chief Insp Parkin pointed out the lead from his Chief Supt Nick Adderley, who featured in the April issue of Professional Security, as a speaker at the BSIA annual crime prevention exhibition in the city. There Chief Supt Adderley spoke frankly about how businesses should not expect a police response to the so-called low-level shop theft. GMP is losing thousands of officers; demand from the public, politicians and victims of crime is not going down; in some ways, it’s rising as Manchester is a 24-hour city with a Gay Village, and tens of thousands of students. The sheer austerity cuts have forced police into working with others. Chief Insp Parkin mentioned in passing the closing of the Bootle Street police station and a move into the town hall, which allows more regular and direct working with local government workers, for instance in pub licensing.

So much for the symbolism of a senior policeman speaking at a Securitas event. It offered an update on the RSU. To recap from last year, and as was aired at the seminar, Securitas began by offering a response service to retailers around St Ann’s Square, near the Arndale Centre, the city centre’s main mall. The basic service is an alert button – a shop can have one for each member of staff, or one on each floor; indeed, as Paul King told Professional Security, Securitas’ own officers that work at the M&S store on New Cathedral Street have the button. If a user has any suspicion – or simply feels uncomfortable about something – they press the button. Securitas’ average response time is 120 seconds (on foot). Last spring I accompanied two officers – they patrol in pairs – on their round. While the pairing is to deter shop thieves, if there’s more than one incident, officers will split. Generally they have a background in HM Prison Service (as has Lindsay Batoryk), the police (Stuart Pizzey and Ian Foster, the ops manager, are former GMP) or armed forces. They are SIA-badged in door supervision, and trained among other things in first aid and (through Project Griffin) awareness of terrorist reconnaissance. Some of the officers were at the event, in black trousers and grey top; as Lindsay Batoryk said, the company kept away from high-vis uniforms, seeking to create the right impression. A retailer can also pay for visits, whether just a literal head around the door and a wave, for reassurance; or a walk-around the store, and fitting room checks for clothing retailers, often the area of choice for thieves.

Introducing the event, Paul King mentioned the patrol services that Securitas run in some Continental cities; he named Zurich, Copenhagen and Oslo. Now Securitas are not proposing the same for Britain – for one thing, its officers on the Continent might be armed. The RSU officers are on foot, rather than in 999-style cars. Significantly, he said: “It’s all about local delivery.” That goes for the highly local service – which is not going city centre-wide (yet) because of that 120-second response. Any longer, even four or five minutes, let’s say, and that is a long time for a shop to be dealing with a confrontation, and the offender may well have left the scene by then. As the pressing of the alarm device (it’s a black box) goes to the officers’ mobile phones rather than an alarm receiving centre, a retailer’s staff can feel reassured that most of the time the officers are there before anything has ‘kicked off’ and will deter a theft or anti-social behaviour. If not, the officers will contain and manage the incident, contacting the police if need be, meaning retail staff are not taken off the shop floor.

It’s also local because the security staff are local – including Paul King, who reminisced that he bought his first record (Hunky Dory by David Bowie) nearby. Lindsay Batoryk went into more detail. The service is to deter and prevent low-level retail crime. She said that the feedback from retailers using the RSU so far has been outstanding, beyond what Securitas was expecting. Holland and Barrett, Sports Direct, GAP and Fat Face were among customers quoted. One unnamed retailer has given the security contractor its shrinkage figures, showing a reduction of 15 per cent between January and April. She added that the alarm device also lets the user speak, for instance to say that a concern has blown over. Securitas is also a member of CityCo and carries the Storenet radio. On officer training, she stressed that the service is about deterrence, and getting physical is a last resort: “I don’t want to see any of my officers rolling around the floor with a shoplifter.”

Rob Dyson, a Mancunian, is in his fourth decade of retail security, having worked for retailers in-house and under contract (notably Sabrewatch). He was ten years with Bolton’s business crime partnership before he joined CityCo in 2009. He described security costs as probably one of the biggest expenditures for retailers, ‘and people are cutting back on security at all times.” Of the RSU he said: “This model is the best model I have seem and it supports and complements what we do as a partnership with the GMP.” Attenders of business crime events in the 2000s will recall Rob’s stress on data – letting retailers know who the offenders are, and where they are from, so they are given exclusion bans, and the city becomes less attractive to such criminals, and more attractive to shoppers. Here he showed a ‘heat map’ of offenders against the city centre, mainly coming from north Manchester; gave statistics including some 576 people excluded from the city centre (and 76 per cent have never re-offended – in contrast to the high re-offending rate from prison?!). How do you get a ban? CityCo run a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy – caught three times for theft from member stores inside 12 months and you’re banned for 24 months; or if you are equipped to steal (with magnets or a foil-lined bag, for instance); or if you are violent. That way, the exclusions target the professionals and not anyone making a one-off mistake. “It works,” Rob summed up. CityCo has also 16 ASBOs against the persistent offenders who may intimidate shop staff. Echoing the Securitas view Rob questioned if it was worth a retailer detaining a shoplifter in a room for two hours for a £5 theft.

And Chief Insp Parkin, too, has been with GMP since 1997. Echoing Chief Supt Adderley at the BSIA seminar in March, he spoke of police having to be innovative because of the cuts. As a sign of how Manchester city centre has changed in his time of policing, he spoke of 600 licensed premises and whereas Friday and Saturday nights used to be busy, and perhaps Thursday; now every night is, as students seem unaffected by the recession. He did suggest that recorded crime – thefts from cars, for instance – is far lower than is perceived. “The future for us isn’t bleak, but the way we police has got to change,” he said. As the police’s budget falls and the economy becomes more active again (which may suggest more crime simply because people are out more), how can police fill that gap? With such volunteers as the street pastors by night; and private companies have ‘a role to play in policing the city centre’: “There are certain tasks within policing which we will have to take a step back from. There may be times where we will not be investigating that particular crime because it is not in the public interest.

Summing up

To sum up, while this security service has been a long time coming – Professional Security was told that Securitas have been working on it since 2007 – its time has come. It’s been done with care; take the name for instance. The security company had thought to call it ‘retail response’; but retailers suggested the softer ‘retail support’. It was not for Chief Insp Parkin or indeed anyone from Securitas to say whether such a service could work in – to take two cities at random – Leicester or Plymouth. But there is a demand; retailers are thinking interally and having conversations. As reported last issue, Mick Phipps of Wilkinsons spoke at the Retail Fraud conference in April of Wilkos and Boots in Nottingham looking at whether to share a guard. “Little acorns,” Paul King said. Securitas in Manchester have planted something.

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