The clip shared on social media yesterday by the BBC’s Nicky Campbell was unremarkable only because variations of it can be seen every day.
Two men frantically empty shop shelves of cosmetics, pouring them into large bags while onlookers film the outrageous scene. They make no effort to hide their faces and when their bags are full they simply dash out of the door. The scene was a branch of Boots on Clapham High Street, but it could have been anywhere given the plague of shoplifting that’s become endemic across the country.
In January, the British Retail Consortium said that the situation was “spiralling out of control” with losses from theft reaching a record £2.2bn in 2023/24. Over that period there were more than 55,000 incidents a day, with organised criminal gangs being responsible for much of the crimewave.
The National Business Crime Solution, an organisation dedicated to tackling retail crime, says that it’s aware of 63 organised shoplifting criminal groups operating across the UK, 26 of which originate from the UK and Ireland with the majority having their roots in Eastern Europe.
Another scourge facing the public, particularly in London, is mobile phone theft. A Freedom of Information request submitted by The Times found that a record number of phones were reported stolen in the capital last year; more than 70,000, up 40 per cent in a year. Again, organised criminal gangs are behind much of this surge, with many devices quickly wiped and then shipped to Nigeria and China where they are either resold or stripped for parts.
The Met Police is trying to get a handle on this, and has launched some high-publicity operations resulting in hundreds of arrests. It’s also hoped that changes announced in the Crime and Policing Bill, which will allow officers to search an address without applying to a court for a warrant, will go some way to reduce the frustration felt by many Londoners who routinely find that police can’t move quickly enough to recover a device while the owner can still track its location.
Shoplifting and phone theft are not minor crimes. They cost the economy billions of pounds a year, leave victims shaken, fuel further crime, undermine public safety and finance international criminal enterprises. Keir Starmer became famous for saying he would “smash the gangs” behind illegal migration; his government should also deploy the same zeal closer to home.