It’s been revealed that a week of action highlighting the year-round policing work tackling retail crime last month Northamptonshire Police secure 90 charges and in total over 241 weeks of imprisonment for offenders responsible for business related crimes.
National Safer Business Action (SaBA) week (10-16 November) saw the Force carry out a range of activities including “proactive intelligence led patrols against key business/retail locations, a distribution of physical crime prevention packs, commercial burglary letter drops, high visibility reassurance patrols, prioritisation of outstanding suspects for arrest and our Force worked with Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership to deliver messaging to stores,” it said in a release.
The county also saw crime prevention provide DeterTech equipment to local retailers to enhance security in the store. This is done through a static camera that can rotate to capture and record movement, allowing a quick response to the crime taking place.
The Retail Crime Team helped to identifying offenders, and officers were able to make 26 targeted arrests for shop theft and other business crimes, with the majority promptly charged for court.
Some have already been dealt with by magistrates, with imprisonment sentences totalling 158 weeks which were handed out during SaBA week and 83 weeks of suspended sentences issued so far. Several other suspects have been remanded into prison and are awaiting trial in the new year.
Chief Inspector James Willis, who leads on business retail crime for the Force, said: “We’re proud to have taken part in the latest Safer Business Action Week, which is coordinated across the country to shine a light on the issues surrounding retail and business crime.
“In all our work to tackle retail crime, we keep its impact on people at the forefront of what we do - how shoplifting affects store staff and owners, how we can work together to make it easy for them to supply the evidence we need and providing support and advice going forward.”
“Our arrest figures this last week are only one part of our retail crime work, but they reflect the Force-wide effort going on to tackle retail crime all year round.
“By building strong two-way relationships with retailers we can also ensure they have the right support in place for their staff, and share crime prevention advice too.
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