A gang of school kid shoplifters are being sought as part of a crackdown after there were almost 200 crimes in Southend in two months.
Southend Business Improvement District (BID) street rangers and Southend’s community policing team have launched a new initiative against thieves after 192 reports of shoplifting in the last eight weeks.
According to BID’s minutes of their latest retail crime meeting, there has been a noticeable “spike in school children and college students shoplifting”.
The schoolkids should be easy to identify. They wear their uniforms. Just like when they cause train delays by forcing the doors, which they did on my Friday homeward commute..
Temporary Insp Ian Hughes, from the community policing team, will inform his team of certain uniforms to be on the look out for.
Why not go into the schools where these 'certain uniforms' are worn, and tell the management what their little darlings are getting up to on the way home?
Schools don't accept any responsibility for their pupils once they're outside the school gates, unlike my days when you'd be in trouble if you did anything wrong whilst wearing the school uniform. If you didn't give up your seat on the bus to an adult somehow it would get back to the head and he'd announce at assembly that he wanted all the boys who went home on the 4:15 105 bus yesterday afternoon to report to his study. Can't imagine this happening these days!
ReplyDeleteTwo options:
ReplyDelete1. Visit the schools and colleges/universitie and advise the kids of the effects of being arrested (or taken to a place of safety if under the age of criminal responsibility) and possibly having a criminal record, can have on their future, where even the opportunities of employment with "Do you want fries with that?" are not open to them.
2. The local shopkeepers display notices that, due to the prevalence of thefts by people wearing such and such a school uniform, pupils from that school are banned from that shop/store. If thefts are by students from a local college/university, display notices that anyone caught stealing will, after criminal action, be banned from the store. This means that any entry to those premises will be as a trespasser and the act of theft will become burglary - a more serious offence and a higher penalty.
It worked in the sh*t hole I policed, though posting stills from the store CCTV camera, showing the theft, is no longer allowed because of yuman rites innit!
Penseivat
I'm sure Headmaster Fagin will deny any involvement with his light-fingered little scamps.
ReplyDeleteHow does having community officers 'looking out' for school unforms help anything? They arrive way too late to spot anyone who may have done it. They can't and won't do anything at that stage to work out who did it. And the local high schools will probably have hundreds, maybe over 1000 kids, all wearing the same uniform, so just spotting some kids in that uniform hours later, or on another day, isn't going to help. These is just placatory words to disguise the fact that the police will do nothing.
ReplyDeleteWhen seconds count, the 'police' are only minutes away -- after their nail polish has dried and the bacon butties eaten, of course. 'Community Officers' are even worse than plod.
ReplyDeleteI was a Police Officer in a British Colony, Hong Kong. Shoplifting by young girls became a problem in my area. It seemed that in order to join a particular shoolgirl clique, the would-be members had to show proof of theft. Two girls were apprehended and I had to consider punishment. I reverted to the old Chinese custom of what is called the "Daai ji bo" (big character poster).
ReplyDeleteThe two girls had to stand outside the shop from which they had stolen with cardboard signs hanging from their necks stating, in large Chinese characters, "I am a thief. I stole from this shop."
The girls were in tears for the hour that they stood outside the shop.
Shoplifting in my area dropped by over 70% after that.
Humiliation works.
"Schools don't accept any responsibility for their pupils once they're outside the school gates, unlike my days when you'd be in trouble if you did anything wrong whilst wearing the school uniform."
ReplyDeleteMy mother's grammar school once held an assembly because the headmistress was informed children in uniform were sitting on the Tube while adults were standing. Not even elderly or disabled ones, either!
"It worked in the sh*t hole I policed, though posting stills from the store CCTV camera, showing the theft, is no longer allowed because of yuman rites innit!"
I suspect that's the excuse. And it IS an excuse!
"How does having community officers 'looking out' for school unforms help anything?"
It gives the impression 'someone in authority is doing something'..?
"Shoplifting in my area dropped by over 70% after that.
ReplyDeleteHumiliation works."
Because the Chinese have the concept of 'losing face' and 'dishonouring the family'. Most of the schoolchildren I see .... well, let's just say that they aren't Chinese!
So it's doubtful that'd work.