Police vow to tackle persistent shoplifters in Boston
Lincolnshire Police has been working with local organisations
Police chiefs have vowed to tackle shoplifting in a Lincolnshire town and say they’re planning to crack down on ‘persistent’ offenders.
Members of Boston Borough Council’s overview and scrutiny committee heard that Lincolnshire Police has been working with local organisations to identify repeat shoplifters and the force is planning to specifically target those offenders.
At a meeting on Tuesday, February 10, Coun Andy Izard (Independent – Witham) asked what the police force was doing to tackle shoplifting in Boston.
He added: “Speaking to our business owners, shoplifting seems to be on the rise and obviously some of it gets reported, but some of it doesn’t.
“I was just wondering again, with the allocation of new funding, whether you’ve got anything you could particularly look at to help our local businesses who suffer financial losses through shoplifting?”
Lincolnshire Police has received an additional £12 million from the government as part of an exceptional financial support package, in recognition of the financial pressures that it’s facing.
The force has previously said that this will mean that it will be able to recruit more officers and police staff following years of cuts.
Boston and South Holland neighbourhood policing chief inspector, Richard Nethercott, said that the neighbourhood policing team has worked with local organisations to specifically investigate shop thefts in the town as part of ‘Operation Continents’.
The partnership is made up of a range of organisations including local security teams, CCTV operators, and probation services and aims to support the police in catching persistent offenders.
He added: “We’ve had specific days of action and we’ve targeted individuals and we’ve targeted areas.
“Boston has a small number of individuals who commit the bulk of the crime.
“On one day of action alone, we arrested four people and as a result, we cleared up 50 crimes with those four individuals.
“As a result, they were obviously arrested, they were presented to the courts and then the courts would deal with them as they see fit.
“This has been ongoing. The neighbourhood policing team has been doing an amazing job, albeit the thefts still continue, it’s still the same individuals.
“We know who they are, the partnership agencies that we spoke about know who they are.”
Lincolnshire Police chief constable, Paul Gibson, said that the force was planning to specifically crack down on repeat offenders.
He said: “We know shop theft presents a reasonable proportion of all our offending across Lincolnshire.
“That is actually committed by a relatively small number of offenders and moving forward with our investment, and again, we’re still working out the details, what we want to be able to do is focus far more on proactivity and prevention.
“So, targeting persistent shoplifters, also utilising criminal behaviour orders and replicating this in Boston and in Lincoln, you can very quickly get control of a small number of people that are offending providing you’ve got the right resources and you have the partnership and assistance of shop owners and and our wider partners as well.
“That’s definitely the direction I want to go in. I hear it loud and clear that shoplifting is an issue for our communities.”