Taking action to make our city safer for businesses, shoppers, residents and visitors

Our Business Crime Team was joined by staff from the East of England Co-op’s dedicated security team to focus on safer business action in Chelmsford city centre recently.

We have a good working relationship with the store chain, sharing intelligence and information to tackle offenders and reduce shoplifting and assaults on shop staff.

Together, our business crime officers and the security team talked to retail staff in stores across the city centre – starting with the Co-op’s new store at Chelmsford rail station – and offered practical advice on evidence-gathering, staff safety, store layout & security and crime prevention.

By producing evidence packs, collecting statements from store colleagues and completing all the relevant paperwork to hand over to us, East of England Co-op helps us to present strong cases at court.

And this has successfully helped to bring frequent offenders to justice in recent months.

PC Mike Lee, who organised the day, says we need the help of retailers and the public to tackle retail crime, which is why we focus on working with partner agencies and the businesses themselves.

“Issues negatively impacting businesses can only be approached through building strong partnerships.
“By understanding their needs, we can adapt our problem-solving methods to suit the issues they identify and develop relevant specialist crime prevention advice.”

Mike delivered a conflict management input to retail, hospitality and homeless services staff at the Chelmsford For You Business Improvement District (BID) offices on the day.

Operation Pedlar was another area of focus and our business crime officers visited retailers across the city, including Melbourne and Great Baddow, to sign them up to the scheme. Staff pledge not to sell stolen goods if these are offered to them and, instead, to report incidents to the police.

And our fraud prevention co-ordinators visited businesses in Great Baddow and Widford Industrial Estate to offer online safety advice.

Chelmsford city centre is one of 15 Grip hotspot zones in Essex where our officers carry out short, sharp patrols to act as a crime deterrent and engage with the community.

And, complementing the activity of our business crime officers and fraud prevention co-ordinators, officers also carried out Grip patrols there and conducted several stop and searches.

Meanwhile, Essex County Fire and Rescue staff conducted fire risk assessments and compliance on businesses on Widford Industrial Estate.

Sergeant Christian Denning, of our Business Crime Team, says:

“Shoplifting is a problem which the police and retailers need to resolve together and communication is key to this.
“Essex Police has been working with East of England Co-op for a long time and, by being open and honest with each other, we’ve been able to develop solutions together to help reduce shop theft and keep retail staff and businesses safe and secure.
“For instance, our business crime officers can advise retailers on ways they can make simple changes to their store layouts to make it more difficult for shoplifters to operate unseen and on other security measures.
“And we target prolific and persistent offenders. The evidence packs provided by the East of England Co-op help us to build strong cases to present at court, which are more likely to result in a conviction.
“They also provide us with the evidence we need to apply for criminal behaviour orders, which courts can impose on the worst offenders. They can include bans from entering certain shops and requirements to attend drug and alcohol treatment services.
“And, in Essex, people arrested for acquisitive crimes, such as shop theft, are tested for cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin under our drug test on arrest scheme. If they test positive, they are required to attend a drug assessment.
“By tackling shoplifting together, and from many angles, we are working to reduce the number of thefts, to remove the need to offend in the first place and to keep retail staff safe from harm.”

Between 1 January and 11 August 2024, our officers arrested 851 people on suspicion of shoplifting across Essex.

Lee Hammond, Head of Profit Improvement at East of England Co-op, says:

“Working with the police in Essex has allowed us to take a more practical approach to dealing with crime against our business and our colleagues.
“We recognise that if we put the time into gathering evidence, the police can make the arrest and there is a higher chance of a conviction.
“In some cases, offenders are getting a good length of custodial sentences. Our work with Essex Police has been successful in securing convictions for some of our most prolific offenders, which prevents them from causing us, and other retailers, problems again in the future.
“We’ve already started work with other police forces across East Anglia to repeat the success we’ve had in Essex across the rest of our business.”

Essex Chambers of Commerce chief executive Denise Rossiter adds:

“The solution to the increasing problem of retail crime is for shops and the police to work together in bringing offenders to justice.
“It’s fantastic to see local businesses in Essex working together with our local police force to solve a problem which affects everybody.”

Our Business Crime Team

Our Business Crime Team is dedicated to supporting businesses, explaining how they can report crime to us and, just as importantly, what will happen when they do. 

The team advises on how to stop crimes from happening in the first place, providing security, staff safety, crime prevention, fraud and cyber-crime advice.

Our business crime officers work with Essex Chambers of Commerce, the Essex Federation of Small Businesses, local community safety partnerships, retail chains and independent stores, sharing & developing national best practice, identifying risks in the workplace and emerging crime trends.

For more information, visit our Business Crime Team pages.

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