No such thing as ‘petty’ crime...it must be stopped
AVIDEO went viral on the internet last week. It was filmed inside Boots the Chemist on Station Road, in my Chingford constituency. Anyone watching it could see two people with large bags clearing the shelves.
At least one shopper could be seen running out of the shop, petrified, and one man standing behind the cash till, frozen in fear.
There is a good reason why they are so frightened.
It is because on countless occasions those who have resisted such thieves have been attacked brutally, and even threatened with knives and hammers.
The sad fact is, this isn’t just happening in my constituency but everywhere.
These criminals are utterly brazen. They are so unconcerned that anything will happen to them that they don’t even bother to cover their faces.
They run into the shops, clearly targeting the higher-priced items, and then clear the shelves.
They are blatant because they don’t believe the police will do anything. Sadly, they are all too often right about that.
This is the second time in two weeks that the Boots has been hit, losing them around £10,000.
They are not alone.
Between the Co-op and Boots in Station Road, over the last five to six months, thieves have stolen goods to the value of £125,000 – from just two shops. And we know there are many, many more.
My local councillors and I have been campaigning for some time to get the police to take this much more seriously. We have gained photographs of regular thieves, often as they left shops with stolen goods still on them.
Those that took the photos were sworn at, spat at and threatened.
Yet on just one shopping street, in one constituency, we were able to gather photographs of 29 criminals engaged, literally, in daylight robbery.
A couple of weeks ago we held a meeting with local police to insist they spend more time in and around the shops, even working in plain clothes to catch the
thieves. That’s why, when I saw the video a week later, I was so angry.
I took it straight to the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister.
I demanded we tell police that this is not petty crime but full-scale robbery with violence.
How ironic then that minutes after I had made this demand at Prime Minister’s Questions, a police van, with four officers in it, were parked up in the High Street for an hour.
Yet no officers got out and 15 minutes after they left another shop was hit by the same thieves. You couldn’t make it up.
Having spoken to police, I know that shoplifting has risen in the last year by 50 per cent. In cash terms, this crime is costing an astonishing £1billion a year and rising.
This is the kind of brazen, often violent, crime that worries people the most. It discourages them from going out to shop and leaves once peaceful streets in the hands of the criminals.
Yet it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to break this violent trend.
Many of us recall New York Mayor Giuliani’s highly successful “broken windows” strategy.
The point he made was that low level local crime isn’t petty, but instead is at the root of all crime.
When he first became Mayor, he
demanded that the police arrest what were referred to as petty criminals, the sort of criminals who the police had previously ignored.
After much complaint about how this wasted police time, once they did it, to their surprise, they found that those arrested were wanted for a substantial number of other crimes, which they were then able to clear up.
If someone is prepared to commit one crime, they are almost certainly guilty of others.
If someone is prepared to commit one crime, they are almost certainly guilty of others
SHOPLIFTING has become an epidemic on our streets. Unchecked we risk the larger shops leaving the high streets which would reduce the number of visitors, damaging smaller businesses. It also threatens the quality of life, particularly for the older generation, who will feel too uneasy about visiting the high street.
Although the Government has recruited 20,000 more police, Giuliani’s point should now ring true in the heads of police chiefs up and down the land. Crime doesn’t diminish because we have more police – it diminishes when we have more effective police.