Retailers in Portsmouth are joining forces to help beat vandals and shoplifters.
Twenty-two stores including Southern Co-operatives have joined the new Portsmouth Business Crime Reduction Partnership, which also involves pubs and restaurants, local police and the council.
Information gathered by members on troublemakers can be entered into a database - the National Business Information System - and circulated to the whole group so that patterns emerge such as crime hot spots and the times that problems often occur.
"It's a very proactive way of dealing with problems such as shoplifting and violent crime," said Gareth Lewis, loss prevention and compliance manager at Southern Co-operatives, which has helped set up the scheme.
He added: "Members can share information and photo ID and can use radio contact to call local police for help if they have problems with these identified people in their shop."
Police can issue exclusion notices to troublemakers, which means they will be prevented from entering members' premises. "It's a way to push down the amount of crime we get and drive offending individuals out of the city," said Lewis.
He added that the partnership had 57 members and that more would be encouraged to join. It is also the only partnership in the country to be run as a co-operative. "I think this will be the largest and most successful in the country," he said.

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