retail environment
'Tis the season to be trolleyed
It’s not just Scrooge in fear of disappearing spirits at Christmas as many retailers are trying to avoid the annual seasonal sprinkling of festive theft in the form of alcohol trolley push-outs.
According to the Centre for Retail Research (CRR), spirits are an annual staple in the top 3 most stolen seasonal stocking fillers as the season to be ‘trolleyed’ gets underway.
Thieves have already made an early start on their Christmas shopping with the hope of spiriting away their festive tipples, but not all stores are a push-over.
One such unsuccessful ‘shopper’ was arrested at a leading supermarket in Peterborough on Monday 1 November following reports of attempted theft from a store in Wisbech.
He was stopped by security guards as he went to leave the shop with £643.95 worth of alcohol and food in his trolley, having made no attempt to pay for it. He was recognised after having been caught on CCTV stealing from the store twice last month.
On 16 October, he filled bags which were inside a trolley with two bottles of cognac, two bottles of vodka and 34 bottles of Jack Daniels worth £1,246.
In order to hide the number of bottles, he placed packs of tortilla wraps on top of the bags and made his way out of the shop where he loaded the haul into his car.
Twelve days later on 28 October, he returned to the same store where he did exactly the same, this time stealing 30 bottles of Jack Daniels, six bottles of whisky and two bottles of vodka totalling £1,264.45.
Following the latest ‘shop’ on 1 November where staff intervened, he was arrested on suspicion of theft and going equipped for theft after magnets were found on his person.
PC Joshua Crown, who investigated, said: “He was so brazen in his actions, carrying out high-value thefts on two separate occasions and nearly getting away with a third.
“These were clearly planned with him concealing the many bottles so not to raise suspicions and using items to out-smart the store alarms.”
The man was charged with two counts of theft of goods worth £2,510.45, as well as going equipped for theft, both of which he admitted at Peterborough Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday (2 November). He was sentenced to 17 weeks in prison as well as being made to pay £2,510.45 compensation to the supermarket.
Matthew Day, director at Gatekeeper Systems, said, “As a footnote and a moral to this familiar Christmas story, such spirited and audacious hauls could have been stopped in their tracks. Gatekeeper’s Purchek wheel-locking technology is being piloted by a number of leading retailers because it prevents the trolley travelling over the threshold of the store if there has been no attempt made to pay.
“We commissioned some independent research carried out by Professor Adrian Beck which also highlighted the agnostic nature of the technology in that it stops all push-out thefts without profiling types of shoplifters.”
