Malls go hi-tech and share data to outwit gangs
Rise in retail robberies puts stores on their guard, write Dave Marrs and Alistair Anderson
THE retail sector is under siege, with the latest crime statistics showing a record 805 armed robberies taking place in SA during the 12 months to the end of March.
But companies are increasingly organising to fight back, with encouraging results.
According to the Consumer Goods Council of SA, which represents about 12,000 retailers, the five largest chains saw a 25% jump in robberies experienced at their outlets, which translated to a 36% increase in cash losses. Jewellers experienced a 39% rise in robberies and an astonishing 300% increase in cash losses.
This is coming on top of a rise in retail robberies of almost a third during the previous 12month period that ended in March last year and a similar surge in truck hijacking incidents. It is clear that current crime prevention strategies are not working.
Retail companies — including Shoprite, Pick n Pay and Woolworths, as well as banks, jewellers, clothing chains and producers of goods that are easily resold on the black market, such as cigarettes — are spending billions on security each year, but do not have much to show for this.
One reason is that armed robberies at business premises are increasingly the preserve of organised gangs that obtain inside information on truck movements, delivery times and security systems from employees, either through bribery or intimidation. Pre-empting truck hijackings and mall robberies should be a job for the police’s crime intelligence unit, but this function has been weakened in recent years because of political factional battles.
New strategies are needed, says Consumer Goods Council of SA crime risk initiative head Graham Wright, and business must become as organised as the gangs. There is evidence to back this up: despite a dearth of reliable police intelligence, retail property groups that have invested in technology and share information among shopping malls have managed to buck the trend and suppress the crime rate affecting their tenants.
Hyprop Investments — which has sizeable stakes in some of SA’s most upmarket shopping malls, including Canal Walk, Clearwater Mall, Somerset Mall, The Glen, The Mall of Rosebank and Hyde Park Corner — says in contrast to the overall police statistics there was, in fact, a 20% decline in armed robberies on its properties in the 2014-15 period, as well as 32% fewer vehicle thefts and 18.5% fewer thefts from vehicles.
CEO Pieter Prinsloo (pictured) says each property has teams of uniformed and plain-clothes security personnel who monitor the premises, including parkades, at all times.
Old technology analogue CCTV security surveillance systems have been systematically replaced since last year, with a licence plate recognition capability being introduced that promises to improve Hyprop’s success rate. Resilient Property Income Fund, whose malls are located mainly outside the metropolitan areas and in townships, such as the Mall of the North in Limpopo and Irene Village Mall outside Pretoria, has also invested heavily in technology. CEO Des de Beer
says being able to clearly identify robbers in highresolution images has helped the group to keep the robbery rate at its malls from increasing.
In such circumstances the displacement of crime to less secure retail centres and across economic sectors is to be expected.
Mr Wright of the Consumer Goods Council says this is a trend, as is the tendency of organised criminals to shift attention from one retail group to another.
The response of the council’s crime risk initiative has been to emphasise collaboration across companies and sectors by widening focus from the Big Five retail companies and jewellery stores to include insurers — which possess a wealth of useful data derived from claims — as well as clothing shops and petrol stations.
The emphasis, says Mr Wright, is on sharing sector-specific intelligence, especially persuading shopping malls to cooperate across ownership affiliations so their successes can be replicated, and they can learn how others have tackled similar problems.
Encouragingly, Mr Wright says the initiative’s relationship with the police has improved markedly in recent months, with a number of crime syndicates involved in truck hijacking and robberies of cellular outlets being broken up because of improved communication between freight companies, courier companies and the police.
“We have put in place a more formal, structured approach to working with the police, which works better than the emphasis on personal relationships that applied in the past,” he says.