Shoplifters are thieving from Herne Hill supermarkets “with impunity”, fuelling the leafy neighbourhood’s thriving “drug economy”, a local councillor has warned.
Local councillor Jim Dickson has urged Tesco and Sainsbury’s to do more to help police prosecute perpetrators to address the area’s “deterioration of safety”.
A local shoplifter, who the News witnessed stealing detergent bottles, claimed she stole from the Tesco on Herne Hill “five times a day” to support her drug addiction.
Tesco and Sainsbury’s have both said they take the security of its stores and staff very seriously and that they already liaise with police on shoplifting.
But Herne Hill and Loughborough junction councillor Jim Dickson said major retailers should do more to help police.
In letters sent to the CEOs of Tesco and Sainsbury’s, he claimed local police often “requested co-operation” from local stores only to be told it’s not company policy to support prosecution for shoplifting.
He urged the supermarkets to help police by providing CCTV footage and witness statements when necessary.
Speaking to this paper, he said: “The major national retailers aren’t playing their part and we are asking them to help us apprehend repeat shoplifting offenders who are taking goods… in order to buy drugs, fuelling the drug economy in the centre of Henry Hill.”
On arriving at the Herne Hill Tesco Express the News caught up with a shoplifter who’d just run out of the store with a bag full of liquid detergent bottles.
Wishing to remain anonymous, she said: “I wouldn’t go into little independent shops. It’s better I do this than rob someone’s house.
“They know me in there so I have to be quick. I do it about five times a day. That one gets slaughtered. There’s loads of people going in there.”
She explained she would sell the detergent for roughly £20 to support her drug addiction adding: “There’s loads of drug addicts around here.”
Tesco says it takes the security of its stores and colleagues seriously and that staff at the Herne Hill store always liaises with the police on issues impacting the store.
Asked about the shoplifting problem, Tesco store manager Renata Gasova said: “It’s really bad. If you open the CCTV anytime you’ll see someone always taking something.”
But she also said that staff always report incidents to the police and on the company’s internal system.
A spokesperson for Sainsbury’s, whose store on Herne Hill has also been cited as a shoplifting hotspot, said: “The safety of our colleagues and customers continues to be our highest priority.
“We’re one of the retailers supporting Project Pegasus to create more efficient ways of tackling organised crime by working together with the police and other retailers.”
“We were the first retailer to introduce colleague worn cameras in 2018 to protect our team. Colleagues now wear cameras in every Sainsbury’s store and footage can be uploaded direct to a police portal.”
In a letter written to the Home Secretary in September, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) indicated that police weren’t always following up on thefts even when they were reported.
The BRC wrote: “For one major retailer, the police’s own data shows that they failed to respond to 73% of serious retail crimes that were reported.”
The letter also said that in 2021/22 retailers lost £953m to shoplifting and spent £715m on crime prevention measures.
The BRC also reported a steep rise in violence against shop workers and urged the government to make ‘assaulting a retail worker’ a statutory offence.
The Met Police was approached for comment.