'I've spent thousands to tackle shoplifting - but am still hit six times a week'
Sixty-four cabinets to lock items in, an extra member of staff to monitor them, £6,000 spent on 30 CCTV cameras - and still a Doncaster shop-keeper is targeted at least six times a week by shop-lifters.
Carolyn Tarlton, who runs The Gadget Stall in Doncaster’s Frenchgate Shopping Centre with partner Neil, says she doesn’t believe shoplifting is on the decrease and is at a loss as to what else she can do to combat it.
She says the money and measures she is spending on trying to deter shoplifters is deterring genuine customers who can’t browse and look at items freely before deciding to buy.
Ms Tarlton will openly tackle and confront shoplifters - but daren’t walk the street at night. She has been threatened with violence, knives and says a security guard was threatened with a needle and had liquid sprayed on him when confronting anti-social behaviour in the centre.
She said: “I don’t believe numbers are coming down at all. People are fed up of reporting it and nothing being done. I don’t report 90 per cent of thefts in my shop. People say ‘why not’, but police want you to give them a name and I don’t always know.”
When it comes to children shop-lifting, she has called their parents to the shop to shown them CCTV evidence in the hope parents will take action.
Ms Tarlton said: “Parents have said ‘oh my child would never do that, their friends have put them up to it. I show them the CCTV and they can’t believe it. If I have told parents, I rarely involve the police, but when it is adults you might as well whistle.”
Sometimes Ms Tarlton can recover items, sometimes not. Once she lost an item worth £200 and others are often between £50 and £100.
“It mounts up”, she adds. “I feel nervous tackling people, but if I don’t, I won’t get my money back and I will get more thefts.”
She recalls two particular incidents. One where she chased a shoplifter and he dropped a knife. “I was taken aback but thought ‘well he hasn’t got it now’, so carried on”, she said. The second when a man took a hat worth £6. Ms Tarlton found him, got the hat back then later discovered he had been involved in a knife attack.
A stronger national stance on shoplifting from police and retailers is needed, Ms Tarlton added before the situation improves. But she worries before it does, swarms of gangs targeting high streets, as seen in London and Birmingham, will come to Doncaster.
She added: “That would force me to close for good, it is my big worry. Already here, shops without security are being ransacked and because staff are being told not to do anything it is going to get worse.
“If everybody clamped down and there was a national attempt to stop thefts then things would improve but I don’t think it will.”