The Co-operative Group is bolstering its security in its supermarkets by installing over 200 secure checkout kiosks, locking cabinets for spirit bottles, and deploying AI technology to oversee self-checkouts.
This move comes in response to a 44% surge in retail crime last year, with around 1,000 incidents occurring daily.
Despite a £200 million investment in security enhancements, such as recruiting additional guards and deploying a mobile undercover team to focus on crime hotspots, the retailer witnessed a nearly 48% surge in shoplifting cases.
Security working at the 2,400 Co-op stores in the UK detained over 3,350 individuals in 2023 for offences such as abuse, harassment, physical assaults on staff and shoplifting.
Matt Hood, the supermarket’s managing director, said: “This is not a few opportunistic shoplifters becoming more prolific. This is organised crime and looting.”
He added that multiple times per week criminals were jumping over kiosks to take items such as alcohol, cigarettes, and lottery cards.
Hood claimed these targeted stores would remain unprofitable until new security measures such as secured doors protecting till kiosks were implemented.
Facial recognition isn’t used by Co-op, unlike several of its rivals.
However, Hood does agree with his competitors that stronger legal actions should be taken against retail crime.
“People who are really organised can only be stopped by custodial sentences and the police. We need it to have consequences,” he said.
“The thing that concerns me more than anything is that we have colleagues who won’t bother to report as they know they are not going to get a reaction.”
Even if a security guard detains a person believed of committing a crime, they are forced to let them go if the police don’t turn up.
“You can imagine how demotivating that is for people working in the shop and how motivating [it is] for shoplifters,” Hood added.
The supermarket boss then pointed to the successful collaborations with police forces in areas like Essex, Nottinghamshire, and Sussex have led to arrests and sentences.
He concluded: “Unless these crimes become something police act on, this will continue. It has been proved in Scotland that if you make it a specific crime to attack a shopworker, incidents come down. We need that to happen in England.”