Police need to act to curb retail violence |
| Friday, 03 July 2009 | |
 The results of our annual Retail Violence Survey contain some encouraging news for independent retailers.It's good to see that the number of respondents experiencing violent attacks has dropped to 8%, considering the figure last year was standing at 20%. Good, too, to see the number saying violence has led them to consider giving up their business down from 26% to 13%. But some of the underlying trends are more worrying: increased use of weapons, more victims ending up in hospital, many retailers suffering repeated attacks. And just because the overall figure is heading in the right direction, that doesn't mean we can all sit back and become complacent. Absolutely not. If you project the figure in line with the size of the independent convenience sector as a whole, eight in every 100 retailers experiencing violence still equates to more than 3,700 stores that have been attacked in the past year. And if you consider that four out of 10 affected retailers said they had suffered violence on five or more occasions, and many others had been attacked two or three times, that's a hell of a lot of incidents. What we mustn't allow to happen is that this becomes seen as an "acceptable level of violence". No violence against shopkeepers is acceptable. Shops provide a vital service, helping gel their communities together. No-one providing a community service should have to experience this kind of abuse. As Shane Brennan of the Association of Convenience Stores points out, the survey should serve as another reminder to government and police that they need to do more to support victims in the local shop sector. First, they need to be hunting down and prosecuting those who do commit violence against retailers and their staff - every time. Second, a serious commitment to tackling and penalising shop theft would go a long way to creating a climate where violence against retailers is seen as unacceptable. And finally, they need to show retailers that their concerns are taken seriously, by engaging constructively with shop owners - and not just after a nasty incident. David Shrimpton, |
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