BUSINESS: THEFT
Businesses pay the price of theft
Hard-up Europeans are turning not only to food banks but also to food theft, triggering a shoplifting epidemic across much of the continent. And it is retail businesses and their legitimate customers who are paying the price, writes Hartley Milner. TWO MIDDLE-AGED women wearing baggy ankle-length skirts enter a busy convenience store in north London. Each grabs a basket and proceeds to pass casually up and down the aisles, acting to all appearances like normal customers. On completing their shop, the pair make their way to the checkout with less-thanfull baskets. But it is their curious, slightly comical waddling gait that catches the eye of the store owner. He allows them to pay for the basket items before challenging them about other goods he suspects are concealed in their clothing.
36 | November 2023 | ECJ
The women protest their innocence and attempt to leave, but are detained by store staff and escorted to a side room. They refuse to be searched but lose their nerve when the police are mentioned and fess up to stealing more than £60 (€69) worth of groceries, including cheese, meat, bread and tinned foods. The thieves reveal their ploy was to take the baskets into the ladies’ loo where they transferred the items to bags strapped between their legs and hidden by their long skirts.
Hidden compartments “They may have got away with it had they not been so greedy,” store owner Fazal Ashraf told ECJ. “They stuffed so much into the bags it weighed them down and they were barely able to walk. They would have seen there was no CCTV covering the corridor to the loos, and obviously we don’t have cameras inside our loos. It was quite a clever ruse really,
just poorly executed. “Shoplifters will go to any lengths to hide their crimes. We have found items stashed in false compartments in baby strollers and even in a mobility scooter. But I give them no credit for being resourceful. Retail theft is not a victimless crime. Theft is theft, and someone has to pay for it, and it’s the retailer and eventually their lawabiding customers through higher prices.” Ashraf, who has two stores, estimates his losses from shoplifting at around £2,000 (€2,308) a month. “We’re not a superstore, just an average high street shop struggling to get by like any other business during these desperate times,” he said. “Having to write off sums like this is not sustainable, especially when you include the cost of CCTV and other security measures we’ve had to install. It is possible to get insured against shoplifting as an add-on, but it comes with strict
