Lifestyle store Lark London reveals shock truths about in-store crime
As shoplifting headlines continue to dominate the national press, Lark’s co-owner Priya Aurora-Crowe says there has been more shoplifting in the past three months than in the 20 years since her husband Dom started out as a London-based gift retailer.
“These days, he’s always on the phone to the police,” she told PG Buzz. “They do it brazenly, in broad daylight, and even say things to the staff such as ‘see you later babes!’. We have CCTV in all our stores but, really, there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
And she’s not the only retailer calling for action, as a letter organised by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) to home secretary Suella Braverman has 88 retailer signatures urging the government to create a standalone offence of assaulting or abusing a retail worker, and pushed for tougher sentences for offenders.
The move comes after BRC’s 2023 Crime Survey showed incidents of violence and abuse towards retail staff almost doubled on pre-pandemic levels to 867 incidents every day in 2021/22. It also put the scale of retail theft at £953million, despite retailers spending over £700m on crime prevention.
Meanwhile, the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that shoplifting offences rose by 22% this year and Money.co.uk shop insurance have compiled a list of which areas are the safest and least-safe to own a physical store.
The research revealed the London borough of Westminster is the local authority with the most shoplifting crimes at 16.64 per 1,000 head of population each year while West Devon has the least at 0.6 – and East Devon (0.74) and Mid Devon (1.16) are also in the top 10 of the safest areas.
Priya added: “We’re a lifestyle, gift and greetings retailer, and the shoplifters target our 22 stores across south and west London mainly for clothes, perfumes and sunglasses.
“The shoplifters – usually several of them – pick up all the hangers on the rail and walk out with the clothes, coming in to shoplift from us twice a day, morning and afternoon.
“One evening, Dom was notified on his phone from the alarm, and watched a man breaking into one of our stores on CCTV. He called the police while he was driving to the shop, who told him they do not investigate commercial break-ins – it’s why shoplifting crime is escalating and why shoplifters get away with it.
“Unless the thieves steal goods worth over £2,000 the crime is unpunishable. We get the same guy breaking in at night every two weeks, so every two weeks we have to replace the shop window, fortunately we have a really good insurance policy, and it’s my strongest recommendation to other retailers, as not all insurance policies offer this type of cover. Nevertheless, we have to pay the excess.”
With one friend who is an mp and one who is a local councillor, Priya has expressed her concerns regarding the seemingly unstoppable shoplifting epidemic to parliament as they are pushing for the government to stop this wave of crime.
“We need police allocation,” she added, “to include officers patrolling the streets and the government making it a punishable offence. Currently, shoplifters know the police won’t investigate, and many of the police know the repeat offenders already. We feel that, because we’re London-based, serious shoplifting is happening to us sooner than possibly other regions of the country, something we believe is going to spread.
“There’s the shoplifter who steals right in front of you and could easily be dangerous, as they couldn’t care less about the consequences and what happens to them, and the undetected shoplifter who doesn’t want any drama, so sneaks in and sneaks out of the shop.
“From a retailer’s perspective, if you spot and apprehend a shoplifter then you keep them in the shop and demand they give the items back, you could be prosecuted for false imprisonment. This is something I want to highlight to other retailers.”.
And she’s concerned about the company’s staff, commenting: “You can’t pay people enough to work in this type of retail environment. At Lark, we’ve always promoted a happy, enjoyable vibe in our stores but what’s happening today is the antithesis of that. We now try to hire security staff who can also work on the shop floor.”
And she pointed out that it’s easy for anyone to turn to shoplifting when social media platforms such as TikTok allow posts showing young followers how to steal from shops, pointing out when security guards at local, as well as major retailers, take their breaks. In August, a TikTok video encouraged organised shoplifting in central London, giving a specified day and specified time, causing chaos and involved the police.
“We’ve also seen people at car boot sales selling their looted products in broad daylight, a case in point being a seller at Vauxhall market with a haul of confectionery that had clearly been stolen,” Priya continued. “It’s re-selling above ground, blatantly advertising how unpunishable shoplifting has become.”
She believes that if the government does nothing about making shoplifting a punishable crime many retailers will eventually be forced to close their High Street shops and sell online, or increase prices to compensate for the losses.
“Something must be done, and soon, but it will take government intervention,” Priya stated. “Meanwhile, all we retailers can do is to go on shouting about it until the government listens to us.”
The British Independent Retailers’ Association (BIRA) is supporting The National Business Crime Centre (NBCC) with its Safer Business Action Week, starting on 17 October, where police forces and partners will work together on targeted operations in towns and city centres, running high-profile press and social media campaigns and engaging with local firms, retailers and the community to raise awareness of business crime in each area, including shoplifting.
