Self-service checkouts and Tory police cuts have only embolden criminals - Yorkshire Post Letters

Re: Shoplifting - Dick Lindley’s Letter on April 10 and David Behrens April 11.

For once I agree with Dick Lindley. Waitrose made a great mistake sacking the staff member who tried to tackle a shoplifter. They committed a public relations disaster.

While nothing excuses such crimes, especially when organised gangs and violence are involved, policing and retailing changes worsened problems. Self service tills almost encourage customers to avoid paying and in some shops, notably a High Street outlet that sells everything but what it is named after (Boots) it is near impossible to find an assistant to help with problems using the tills. How tempting it is to walk out without paying.

Instead of placing tills near exits, many shops place them to the sides of a store, making it far easier to walk out with stolen goods unobserved.

Even worse, when Theresa May was Conservative Home Secretary she introduced the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. This made shoplifting of goods valued at £200 or less a “summary-only offence” so in practice offenders are charged by letter and have a fine option instead of custody. So police lost the opportunity to arrest and search suspects, as well as their vehicles and properties.

Criminals play the system. They steal items under £200 and ignore letters and fines. May and her team misunderstood that this would only embolden thieves to steal with impunity.

Even worse, May failed to listen to experts who said that reductions in policing would increase crime. At the Police Federation of England and Wales’s annual conference in 2015, she said: “So please – for your sake and for the thousands of police officers who work so hard every day – this crying wolf has to stop.”

The police were right, the Conservatives were wrong. Crime rose. We're all paying the price for their incompetence. Yet they still claim to be the ‘law and order’ party. What a sick joke.