Retail shoplifting becoming ‘something of an epidemic’

Supermarket shoplifting "affects all families", an owner-operator says. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Supermarket shoplifting "affects all families", an owner-operator says. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
An apparent rise in the number of arrests for shoplifting at Wānaka’s two New World supermarkets over the past year prompted Public Interest Journalism Fund court reporter Guy Williams to ask a supermarket owner, and the police, what is going on?

Regular readers of Otago Daily Times reporting of the Queenstown District Court in the past 12 months cannot help but have noticed the convictions for theft from the township’s supermarkets in Dunmore St and at Three Parks.

Sentencing another shoplifter in the court last month, Judge Russell Walker said it had become "something of an epidemic" in the town and throughout New Zealand.

Judge Walker said retail crime did not only impact the bottom lines of supermarket owners.

"Because supermarkets have to build in the cost of this offending into their prices, it affects all families."

New World Wānaka owner-operator Stuart Hore said when he took over the store in 2021, it was apparent shoplifters were targeting the business.

With support from the Foodstuffs South Island co-operative, he worked with a retail crime consultant, putting his staff through situational awareness training and investing in Auror, a retail crime intelligence platform.

Auror, which does not use facial-recognition technology, enables staff to easily report crime and identify and link previous offending.

Mr Hore said the platform helped to reduce losses from shoplifting, while keeping his staff and customers safe.

Chris Brooks
Chris Brooks
The measures had led to good results in identifying and apprehending offenders.

"Sharing this experience of knowing what to look for, and then gathering and processing the evidence and filing reports with the police, has meant we’ve managed to identify some serial shoplifters who’ve been working across the South Island, not just in Wānaka, and bring these individuals to justice."

Sharing ideas with other business owners had also helped, and Wānaka police had been good to work with, he said.

"Overall, we’re more aware and better at identifying and apprehending shoplifters."

Although statistics are not available for the South Island, the owners of Foodstuffs supermarkets in the North Island have reported a 57% increase in shoplifting incidents in the three months to April compared with the same period last year.

In a statement, Foodstuffs North Island chief executive Chris Quin said its owners had never seen retail crime at current levels.

Its security and loss prevention teams had identified incidents of co-ordinated crime involving individuals or groups stealing to order and on-sell.

Stuart Hore
Stuart Hore
"The trend we’re increasingly seeing is professional criminals who’re stealing brand-specific goods to order.

"That’s not something we’ve seen before at these levels."

Premium cuts of meat and high-value health and beauty products were the most-targeted items, Mr Quin said.

Shoplifters were also becoming increasingly aggressive and violent.

"I see the reports of what our store-owners and their people are dealing with on a daily basis, and it’s distressing when we have people threatening our team members with weapons and throwing punches."

Senior Sergeant Chris Brooks, of Wānaka police, said some of the town’s larger stores were running new security systems that provided better evidence.

Based on recent shoplifting complaints, he estimated Wānaka police were identifying about 90% of the offenders.

Because of the quality of information the stores were providing, it was easier to link multiple thefts by one offender, and "get on to the investigation really quickly".