Shops urged to improve security
A LOCAL election candidate has called for retailers in Runcorn to beef up their security to guard police resources.
Darrin Whyte, who has stood several times as an independent candidate in Halton Castle ward, obtained data from Cheshire Constabulary under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) showing that officers are more likely to be called to Runcorn Shopping City and Trident Retail Park than to Warrington’s flagship town centre mall Golden Square – although the data is subject to some uncertainty based due to depending on search terms such as ‘golden’ for scouring the police database and location searches that can include incidents outside the premises.
According to the raw data, during the eight months to August 31, 2019, Golden
Square (GS) had 109 reported incidents, 37 of which were attended by police.
Meanwhile, Runcorn Shopping City and Trident Retail Park (SCTRP) had 243 reported offences, with 91 attended by police.
In 2018, GS had 145 reported, 57 attended, while SCTRP had 249 reported, 97 attended.
In 2017, GS had 240 reported, 127 attended, while SCTRP had 285 reported, 179 attended.
Runcorn Shopping City was locked down on September 14 this year after reports of a man carrying a machete, resulting in a suspect being charged with criminal damage and having an offensive weapon.
The centre has also experienced intermittent issues with nuisance youths.
Mr Whyte said that with the police having had to make huge savings in recent years, shops could do more to prevent shoplifting and thereby save the police time and resources.
He said: “Although these figures are not covering other areas in Runcorn we can see from them there is a problem, shoplifting is bad at the moment, as bad as it’s ever been. But it’s about time retailers started considering hiring security guards or extra security staff, many retailers must adopt new security measures to defend their stores from light-fingered offenders rather than calling the police with video tapes of shoplifters this is taking up police time that maybe a security guard could have prevented.”
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Karl Clawley, Shopping City manager, said he thought most of the figures would relate to anti-social behaviour aimed at retail staff and that extra security might not be the answer but that conflict resolution training for shop workers might help.
According to the most recent recorded crime statistics, published in August, there were 885 shoplifting offences in Halton in the 12 months to March 2019.
A Cheshire police spokesman said a pilot scheme is under way in neighbouring Widnes and also Crewe that allows shops and businesses to upload evidence straight to the force website.