Even before covid, business groups that have come to cover most British towns and cities – whether business crime reduction partnerships or business improvement districts (BIDs) – were developing their own area policing. That was plain in a webinar to the Security Institute yesterday, by Peter Fisher, general manager of National Business Crime Solution (NBCS) – another ingredient in this process, that like others in its field acts as the glue, linking BID members and other BIDs, shopping centres and other members such as retailers and logistics firms, through data, of crimes and other incidents.
The ideal possibility, as Peter Fisher set out, is to deter a travelling thief by using shopping centre or other car park automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras to gain an alert of a known offender arriving; passing that info – including a picture of the offender from a past detention, maybe in another town, or even Scotland or Northern Ireland – to wardens, rangers or whatever the name is given to the patrollers employed by the BID or shopping centre or crime partnership. If they do not spot the known thief, the same alert – or any update on the criminal’s movements – can go to BID members. If the offender should enter a member’s shop, staff (armed with the photo also) can – politely, or even with impeccable customer service – shadow the offender so that they have no chance to steal. Note that this crime prevention would happen without the least use of, or even sight of, police.
The other pressing problem for retail, as set out by Boots and the Co-operative, retail trade bodies the BRC and ASC and the trade union Usdaw to the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs last month, is anti-social behaviour (ASB). Like the developing new policing of high streets, ASB against retail – including the pub trade, and on trains and buses, anywhere in truth – has taken a particular turn during the coronavirus pandemic; but it happened before covid, and will doubtless carry on after it.
What’s striking is that those who do ASB habitually are so easy to see coming, as Professional Security magazine saw on a tram into Nottingham city centre last Saturday morning. Two men had that not properly shaven, hang-dog look; their clothing was shabby – looking like, but not the same as shabby chic – their talk peppered with swear words. It was about fighting (a fight ‘one on one’ sounded more honourable than unspecified other sorts), that ended with police turning up and giving a warning. Just as a leopard does not change its spots, so the habitually anti-social cannot change their ways for a pandemic; neither wore a mask on the tram, although you’re supposed to (perhaps they had a medical reason not to?) and neither took any notice of the convention of two metre social distancing. Were they paying for their journey? Did they ever?
Whether begging, or shouting or drinking in the street, urinating, and 101 other things, the habitually anti-social have always been with us; and the state has seldom been able or willing to give close enough attention to the social problem. First came anti-social behaviour orders in the 2000s, then from 2015 came Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs). Whatever the particulars, the problem with such state action against the habitually anti-social is that orders require enforcing, even assuming that the state has the bodies and the willingness to put in the time and trouble to make an order against an individual, and then keep track of it. While a PSPO applies to a place rather than people, the same caveat applies – what’s the good of making a PSPO against (typically) dog fouling and littering, and street drinking, if police are not around to enforce it? And if they ever are, do they merely displace the anti-social acts, or the offender comes back the next day and carries on doing it?
Hence the development, before covid, as Professional Security magazine featured – in York, Plymouth, Solihull, Birmingham city centre, Winchester, Salisbury, and Basingstoke – of BIDs or local government hiring private security contract or their own officers to do police-style patrols; and perhaps enforcement of PSPOs. A new pyramid of high street policing was evolving, interrupted like everything else by the pandemic; uniformed but non-police officers to do what traditionally (or only in myth, powerful though it still is) was done by the bobby on the beat; and police usually in vehicles rushing to respond to a 999 call, like a fire brigade.
Police have become a true emergency service – not like the fire service, for they do not sit in a fire station, waiting for an alarm, before they set off; nor does a fire engine drive around; because crime is not like fire. A police presence may serve to reassure the public and even to deter crime; if you see a fire engine, you do not feel that you’re safer from a fire breaking out.
A BID levy, and if a retailer is inside a shopping centre also a fee for services such as cleaning and security, means that businesses are being taxed more than once, for policing. It does amount to the state – gradually, over decades, regardless of which political party is ever in power – retreating from responsibility for business crime. In fairness, some responsibility lies with business and everyone to look after their own affairs – do you leave your car or house door ajar and expect state officials to look after it?!
Rather, the state is forever re-calibrating what it’s responsible for, and this trend is for the state to offload more responsibility on business. In this light we can see the ‘Protect duty’ proposed by UK Government, to set a legal responsibility – widely, not only on concert venues, but cafes, parks, any ‘publicly accessible location’ – for the security of people there, against terrorism. Even though the most recent pre-pandemic acts of terrorism, the Fishmongers Hall and Streatham High Street attacks, were (embarrassingly for the state) by known terrorist criminals; suggesting that the responsibility lay with the state. Would that explain the Home Office’s keenness to press on businesses a ‘Protect duty’?!
A link back to ‘High streets and their new policing: 1’: here.
