Shop owners demand 'zero tolerance' crime policy
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After 23 attacks in 18 months – including one perpetrated by a gang armed with baseball bats and canisters of ammonia-based oil – Anne Cossey could be forgiven for thinking the convenience store business was something of a misnomer.
"We have a drill now," said Mrs Cossey yesterday from her shop in Newcastle upon Tyne. "Stand up straight if there are young strangers in and don't antagonise them if they try it on."
It is a stoicism that corner-shop proprietors across the country have had to learn, according to a report published yesterday which showed that three quarters of shop owners have been victims of crime in the past 12 months. The most common offence was theft but the study also found high numbers of burglaries, robberies and crimes of violence.
The findings tied in with the launch of an industry campaign calling on the Government to treat shop crime with zero tolerance. A total of 3,850 village and urban convenience shops took part in the survey for the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS): 3,173 reported customer theft in the past 12 months, 405 suffered a burglary, 163 a robbery, and 163 a crime involving violence.
The experience of northern England alone attests to the scale of the problem. Corner shops in deprived parts of the Yorkshire and Humber region were invited to bid for a share of a £655,800 Home Office support scheme last month to improve CCTV surveillance, install alarms and improve security lighting.
Racism has often been a factor, most famously in Lancaster where Mal Hussein and Linda Livingstone, owners of a shop on the Ryelands estate, suffered nine years of what civil rights groups called a "Deep South" racism.
The plight of small shopkeepers was even recognised in court this week, when a Mancunian, Andrew Gilbertson, 38, was spared jail despite stealing £250,000 from the post office side of his business. He was driven to his crime in part by the cost of fitting CCTV cameras after seven armed robberies and numerous other thefts and break-ins.
The industry magazine, Convenience Store, published yesterday's figures to promote the launch of its "Zero Tolerance" campaign.
It wants customers of the 54,000 convenience stores in Britain to sign petitions calling for action to prevent shops from being preyed on by criminals. In particular, the ACS says, sales assistants and store owners need greater protection against the worrying rise in serious crime taking place in their stores.
"These people provide an invaluable service to their communities. They provide a lifeline to many rural inhabitants and are especially important to elderly consumers," it said yesterday.
Anne Cossey's husband, Derek, has taken his own precautions, including the installation of wireless CCTV cameras "so the robbers can't cut them.
"It's hard enough work nowadays without [the fear of robbers]. You can't say the job pays enough to make it all worthwhile," said Mr Cossey. "It was a long way from when we set up in the early Nineties."
His wife said: "When you've got a baseball bat held against your head, you don't argue. I felt so nervous starting work again."