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The owner of a Birmingham supermarket says ‘he wants to give up’ as he is forced to deal with shoplifters between five and eight times a day. Amjad Farooq, owner of Wah Wah Mirchi on Soho Road, says he is forced to employ extra staff and do his own security checks as he claims he ‘no longer has confidence in the police’.
The 67-year-old isn’t the only business suffering as new data has emerged claiming more t 24,000 shoplifting offences have taken place in the West Midlands over the past year. Amjad blasts this, claiming the numbers are much higher and blames factors like homelessness for the increase.
The manager claims police rarely come when he reports a crime, and he has no choice but to take items from shoplifters and let them go. Now he must hope the losses don’t destroy his business.
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Amjad told BirminghamLive: “The figures are incorrect because we cannot report shoplifting to the police.
“We are told to report it online and take a crime reference number. It happens to us daily, five to eight times, and we catch them, we just cannot hit them or touch them.
(Image: Personal Injury Claims UK)
“To me any item between 1p-£50 that anyone steals is shoplifting. You can’t claim for insurance on anything so what do you do? Collect reference numbers over the years?
“Shoplifters are displaced, homeless or watch too many TikToks where they show people walking in and out with stolen items. We just grab anything we can off them or check them.
“But they could have a knife and sometimes threaten us when we touch them. Is it getting worse? Absolutely 100%.
“It’s to the point we have to hire more staff members. It is frustrating as you want to give up as losses are so high.”
The figures obtained by Personal Injury Claims UK, through FOI requests to West Midlands Police, found that WMP have logged 82,982 shoplifting offences in the area since April 2021, with figures climbing sharply since 2023.
The data comes as a result of the news that shoplifting in England and Wales has risen to a new 20-year high after the Office for National Statistics revealed that offences rose up 30% in a year.
Retail bosses have accused ministers of allowing shoplifting to effectively become decriminalised, with a huge gap between annual offences and resulting prosecutions, as well as many offences not being reported. The number of offences was 15,343 in 2019-20, the third-highest total in the past five years.
Over the next year, this number then dropped to 10,791 due to Covid lockdown, but as restrictions were lifted shoplifting offences began to rise. In 2022/23 the number boosted to 18,036.
Now the West Midlands saw another jump in the number of shoplifting offences, with the number rising to 24,352 in 2023-24. A major factor in the increase of shoplifting offences is the cost-of-living crisis according to experts.
Although offences are rising, the number of charges and summons has stayed between the 1,500 to 4,000 mark, meaning that only about 14% of shoplifting offences in West Midlands result in a charge or summons.
West Midlands Police said: “We know how distressing shoplifting is for business owners and will actively pursue any lines of enquiry available. As with all crime, we rely on the public to tell us where and when crime is happening and submit as much intelligence.
“All reports we receive help us build an intelligence picture of where shoplifting is happening and who might be responsible. We also have in place a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) which enhances our powers to deal with anti-social behaviour and shoplifting.
“The PSPO has been granted by the local authority in conjunction with the residents and businesses in the area to be managed by police officers, PCSO’s and authorised members of the council. This will give the council the power and ability to issue notices and fines for this sort of behaviour.
“As part of our wider strategy around crime in the Soho Road area, our officers carry out high-visibility patrols as well as engaging with businesses and partners from the Business Improvement District and the local authority to hear feedback and concerns directly.
“Shoplifting, along with the associated anti-social behaviour linked to it, is also being tackled through the use of new Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs). The CBOs allow us to ban certain individuals from areas where they are known to commit crime and arrest them at an earlier stage to proactively prevent offending.”
