'Close to lawlessness': Shop owners call on police to tackle 'shoplifting epidemic'
Shop owners across the West Country have called on police to take urgent action to tackle what they call a 'shoplifting epidemic.'
Last year there were more than 45,000 thefts from shops every day - almost double the previous year's figures.
And the rate of violence and abuse to shopkeepers has also risen.
West of England Metro Mayor, Dan Norris, says the situation is "close to lawlessness" and has started a fund to help pay for more security cameras.
George Lai manages 168 Oriental Supermarket in Bristol, said: "Police definitely should do more.
"We do call the police but because it’s not an emergency they don’t come out quite as quickly as they can.
"I think they need to prioritise shoplifting a little bit more because it’s obviously an ongoing situation at the moment.
"It’s an increase in people losing not just their jobs but also their livelihood where they’re working in this industry."
Figures show there have been 45,000 thefts per day in the last recorded year and the cost to the industry was £3.3 billion.
61 per cent of shopkeepers said the response from the police was poor – and just 8% of violence and abuse towards shopkeepers were prosecuted.
Avon and Somerset police says it has a plan and that shopkeepers should have some confidence in what the force is doing.
Chief Inspector Ronnie Lungu, Avon and Somerset Police, said: "We need shoplifters to report any shoplifting that comes up.
"The challenge we’ve got is sometimes they’ll ring us and we don’t attend because we use what we call a threat-harm risk in order to attend an incident.
"We’ve got other incidents we’ve got to attend so for me they need to know that just because we did not attend, just because it didn’t meet our threat-harm risk, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to be investigated.
"We’ve got ways in which they can send us their statements and CCTV and we’ll be able to investigate it and have a collective approach to know if there is a pattern that builds up."
The West of England Metro Mayor says the police is just one organisation which must take action.
He said: "We’re close to lawlessness.
"So bad is shoplifting now that there is hardly any store or supermarket that isn’t affected on a daily basis and I don’t think that’s sustainable.
"We’ll end up having businesses going out of business impacting on the communities that they serve and having even bigger knock-on consequences and I think we’ve just got to say enough is enough.
"We need something to be done, national government needs to respond and people like mayors like me also need to act.
"I’m doing that by providing grants for people who run shops and supermarkets can get help with cameras, screens, and other things that will help reduce this problem."
Research suggests 70 per cent of shoplifters are problem drug users – which in turn suggests solving that problem might help in store.
Organised crime and tightening household budgets are also cited as a cause of this epidemic.