Covid has been weaponised, the Home Affairs Committee of MPs has heard today from retail sector figures, giving evidence about violence and abuse against shop workers. Among those giving evidence this morning were, from high street retailers, Iona Blake, Security and Incident Manager at Boots; and Paul Gerrard, Campaigns and Public Affairs Director at The Co-op.
Spitting is now a common way to intimidate and threaten shop staff, Paul Gerrard told the committee of MPs online. (Such spitters say that they have covid and that the person spat at will catch the virus.)
But Gerrard like others speaking to the MPs stressed that violence against retail had been rising before covid. Gerrard, Iona Blake, and a third speaker, Tom Ironside, Director, Business and Regulation at the trade association the British Retail Consortium (BRC) strikingly all gave pessimistic assessments to the committee chair, senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper, when she asked at the end of the two-hour session if the witnesses felt the problem would get worse, stay the same or better. She closed the session by saying the evidence had been ‘serious and sobering’.
Before the pandemic, the triggers for violence against staff in store were typically when staff faced shoplifters, or when staff had to challenge customers over under-age sales (typically of alcohol or cigarettes). A theme of the evidence was police response – or rather a lack of it, or at best inconsistent response, across forces. Such has been the fall in police and criminal justice effort against retail crime, Gerrard said that the risk associated with such crime ‘has disappeared, because police response is at best variable’. Later he described ‘very little police presence’, and hence increasing numbers of prolific shop thieves.
It was striking that the pre-pandemic causes of violence against retail – offenders stealing to fund their drug addiction, or addicts used by organised crime – have been so long-running and well-known; and that answers are so few, and that what few answers are around – such as the West Midlands Police programme to treat addict-shoplifters, featured in the February 2019 print edition of Professional Security magazine – are not taken up nationally. Gerrard gave the example of one woman treated by that programme, who stole to fund a cocaine and heroin addiction, who over 20 years had to steal an estimated £3m of goods to fund her addictions.
When asked by Yvette Cooper, Iona Blake of Boots agreed that there had been an increase in violent crime against retail, before covid. Iona Blake spoke of covid as just adding ‘an additional layer’. She suggested two reasons: ‘desperation’, people looking to fund drug abuse habits, or even a style of living due to ‘real poverty’; and theft as a driver of violence and abuse. But alongside that is anti-social behaviour. The risk of prosecution and being caught, she went on, has been deteriorating – that is, people are seemingly prepared to take more risks, and more often. She repeated that ‘we cannot arrest ourselves out of the problem we are currently experiencing’ and called rather for more than one solution.
One solution proposed earlier and discussed by earlier witnesses – Joanne Cairns, Head of Research and Economics at the trade union USDAW; and James Lowman, Chief Executive of the trade body ACS (Association of Convenience Stores) – was a specific offence of assaulting a shop worker, as was recently passed into law by the Scottish Parliament.
Replying to further questioning by Hull Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson, about covid ‘weaponisation’, Paul Gerrard said that covid was now the ‘dominant trigger for violence’, whether queueing outside stores, or social distancing inside; and in the early days of the pandemic, over restrictions on the number of some items that shoppers could buy.
Gerrard said that the Co-op had increased its numbers of guards by half, to counter ‘flashpoints’ where people were getting ‘very distraught at times’. He, and others, did not think that violence would go away when covid does; rather, the pre-pandemic causes would return. Likewise Iona Blake recalled in the early days of the pandemic, race and hate incidents; ‘but the weaponisation of covid by spitting has been a real concern; it’s something we have never really experienced before’.
Later, she gave a London example of how an offender pulled away a Perspex screen to spit at a shop worker; the Met Police responded brilliantly, she said, but in court magistrates were only able to watch footage of the attack from one angle, on a tablet; and decided there was not enough evidence, even though the court did not read witness statements. The offender has been back in store to taunt staff. Tom Gerrard earlier gave a Co-op example of shortcomings, after telling MPs that the Co-op only reports the most serious offences to police. Even then, two times out of three, the police don’t attend. One recent case that Gerrard singled out was of someone wanting to buy more Paracetamol than is allowed; he made threats and became aggressive and began to assault people. He was taken out of the store, where (after dark) he still made threats against the female store manager. Staff called police, and heard nothing until the next day, when police asked if ‘everything was ok’.
More on crime against retail in the May and June print editions of Professional Security magazine.
Picture by Mark Rowe; tabard ready for wearing by Co-op convenience store guard on entrance, Burton upon Trent.
