High street frozen food chain Iceland is set to reward customers who help catch shoplifters in a brand-new initiative. The company’s bosses are planning to add a £1 bonus to the card of any shopper who alerts staff about a thief.
This initiative is the latest effort by Iceland’s executive chairman, Richard Walker, to tackle Britain’s escalating shoplifting problem, with three thefts occurring every minute in the year leading up to March.
Speaking to the Daily Star, he expressed his readiness to upset ‘every liberal lawyer’ and ‘human rights group’ by employing a variety of measures to protect his staff from ‘violent’ organised criminals targeting stores across the nation.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has cautioned retailers that displaying images of thieves ‘may not be appropriate’ as it could infringe on the suspects’ data rights. However, Richard plans to ignore this advice and take things a step further by introducing facial recognition technology across his 970 UK stores, reports the Daily Star.
Most of these stores already have security guards, entrance barriers, locked product cases, and provide staff with headsets for communication about potential threats. However Richard, 45, stated that he feels compelled to do more due to his frustration over a surge in shoplifting offences in recent years.
He said: “We are going to give £1 on our bonus card to any customer who spots a shoplifter. Obviously they can’t just point out anyone and just get free money. But if a person is properly shoplifting we will give them a quid. We spend millions on security. We have never spent more on in-store security and yet violent incidents have never been higher. It’s really really serious and really important.”
To earn the £1 thank-you bonus, shoppers will need to be part of the supermarket’s loyalty scheme and have an Iceland Bonus Card.
He mentioned that politicians had promised to ‘put more bobbies on the beat’, make violence against store staff a stand-alone crime and scrap lenient ‘low-value shoplifting’ punishments for thieves stealing goods worth less than £200. While showing support for the measures, Richard stressed a need for more action on shoplifting, urging the government to ‘not just talk about it’. He added that there is nowhere in the UK unaffected by shoplifting, from ‘small market towns to big inner cities’.
Richard also added that it was ‘ridiculous’ that a shop owner in north Wales who put up a sign criticising ‘scumbags shoplifting’ had been advised by police to consider changing the ‘offensive’ wording.
He said: “These people are scumbags. What’s wrong with that word? We’ve reached a point where the law-abiding feel like they’re the ones on trial while the lawless get away with it. The very word ‘shoplifting’ is a trivialising understatement – it’s theft and increasingly it’s violent theft. And that is what we should call it.”
Richard slammed policing minister Dame Diana Johnson’s suggestion on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that shops may be partly to blame by placing ‘high value’ items near entrances which ‘obviously people will nick’.”
He said: “That’s ridiculous. So we should just give up and cower from the shoplifters. As if we don’t know our own businesses and don’t merchandise in a responsible way.”
Looking for more from MyLondon? Subscribe to our daily newsletters here for the latest and greatest updates from across London.
