Undercover with the detectives catching UK’s worst shoplifters

The shoplifter swaggers straight through the automatic doors towards the meat section of the Bannerbrook Spar convenience store. After a quick glance around, he whips open the fridge, plunges his hands inside and stuffs two packs of sausages into his hoodie.

The thief doesn’t realise it yet, but his decision to target the new-build row of shops on the outskirts of Coventry is a mistake. Hunched over a CCTV monitor in the backroom of the Coventry convenience store is a 6ft 6in built-like-a-rugby-player store detective from the private security firm H&T Experts Ltd.

He’s eyeballed the entire scene and is ready to act. As the shoplifter twists on his heel to make a dash for the exit, rather than paying at the till, the detective pulls the mic hidden in his collar towards his mouth and shouts the codeword: “Christmas! Christmas!”

He jumps out of his seat and goes crashing out through the stockroom. Spar staff freeze as he barrels through the store and out the door where his two equally enormous undercover colleagues are in the process of tackling the shoplifter.

The thief was halfway into his car when the H&T Expert team apprehended him. But there’s a nasty surprise in the passenger seat.

“Dog, dog”, shouts another raspy-voiced store detective as a Staffordshire Bull Terrier snarls and snaps. They are lucky the animal has its owner between them, otherwise the Staffy might have sunk its sharp teeth into an arm or leg.

Not that these seasoned veterans of Britain’s shoplifting epidemic are fazed. In some respects, the consequences of a dog attack are easier to handle than a pointed knife or a heroin addict’s needle, which they’ve faced in the past.

You don’t have to be a detective to know that shoplifting in Britain is worse than ever. Retailers in England and Wales now face over 500 more shoplifting incidents each day than they did a decade ago, official statistics show. Physical attacks are also more prevalent with the Association of Convenience Stores recording 67,000 incidents of violence last year alone.

As part of the Daily Express’s Stop the Shoplifters campaign, and to see firsthand just how bad the situation, I joined security firm H&T Experts’ store detectives behind the scenes at Bannerbrook Spart run by store owners Blakemore.

Retailers hire the company to solve a shoplifting problem and the fully DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checked detectives, who carry handcuffs, have the power to arrest and detain if the situation requires. Undeterred by incidents of violence, they build court-ready bundles of evidence for the police.

Historically, private store detectives were drafted in by an outlet seeking to be proactive about a shoplifting problem. And while this is still true, the circumstances, according to H&T Experts’ founder and operations director Jamie Treloar, have become more extreme.

In some cases he knows of businesses where an item is stolen every 10 minutes, or product losses have hit £1,000 a week.

“The last two years have been crazy. Even in small towns with historically low crime,” he says with a shake of the head. “We had a situation in Bishops Stortford, Herts, where one place had a gang was grabbing cigarettes worth £200 once a week.

“It took our team of four a month to track them down, during which time we also caught over a hundred shoplifters the store had no clue about.”

The operation at Bannerbrook Spar begins with an intelligence briefing for the detectives. Duty manager Lisa, who would prefer not to give her surname, has an array of CCTV repeat offender mugshots for staff to see.

“We’ve got some prolific offenders who will come in four or five times a week,” she tells the detectives. “They’re wanted by the police and they know they’re wanted. But it doesn’t deter them – even though we have things like [AI facial recognition system] FaceWatch [that alerts us when they come in].

“It’s normally 45 seconds that they’re in and out. They’re not here for a row or a fight, they’ll just grab the stuff and go. We’ll only get abuse if we try and apprehend them at the door.”

She recalls an incident the day before when an arriving repeat offender triggered the store’s FaceWatch alarm.

“I went onto the shop floor but by the time I’d got out there he was in his car,” she says. “Then as he drove past he gave me the finger.”

Most convenience stores with a shoplifting issue have an array of offenders. Staff have encountered lists dropped by thieves stealing to order, drug addicts trying to raise the funds for their next fix, schoolkids nicking sweets and, most remarkably, citizens who are usually law abiding but are struggling in the cost of living crisis.

Many retailers no longer stock frequently stolen products like baby formula, the cost of which has risen by 17% since January alone. Elsewhere, recent court cases have shown criminal gangs stealing everyday products from one shop and selling to another.

Sitting on the corner of the row of shops, there is a rat-run of an alley behind the building, a useful exit route for any thief looking to make a getaway. Across the road is woodland, which at night especially, makes it even harder to pursue a thief.

“Often they’ll come in, pick up a basket full of meat, go straight out the door and then cross the road into the woods,” says Lisa. Laundry detergent, meat, chocolate gift sets and booze are all popular targets while some thieves deliberately scan incorrect items though the shop’s self-service check-out – even barcodes of chewing gum packs for crates of beer.

Following the brief, we settle down in the manager’s office beside a CCTV monitor. H&T Experts have one detective feeding information from the cameras, while two undercover operatives pose as shoppers to share feedback from the shop floor.

In addition to facial recognition software, many stores these days use artificial intelligence systems that flag movements associated with theft to members of staff.

Aside from wrongly identifying a person returning their phone to a pocket, the major contrast between technology and the eyes of a store detective is the ability to spot the subtle indicators. Sat beside the H&T Expert operative, I see how the whispered message to watch a customer can be drawn by the flick of a hood or a wobbly step.

However, the first shoplifter spied by the H&T Experts team is not subtle.

Standing in the sweets aisle, the teenage boy swings his head from side to side, frozen to the spot. Convinced by his pantomime gesture that the coast is clear, he jams a couple of bags of Haribo in his jacket and legs it out the door.

You can almost hear his blood run cold when he’s cornered outside by two giant store detectives. The policy is not to lay hands on suspected underage thieves, so it’s a stern word and a request to give the goods back.

The teenager’s face suggests he won’t forget this lesson. The police rarely respond to a complaints of child shoplifting so a firm encounter with a store detective can check baby steps into criminality.

If the first shoplifter surrenders without complaint, the second man apprehended by the H&T Expert team goes down swinging. He’s spotted by one of the undercover team deliberately not scanning a sandwich at the till. But as the raspy-voiced detective apprehends him beside his car he decides to fight them.

Removed to a back room, he pleads ignorance. “I work in construction,” he tells Jamie, “how am I supposed to know how these scanners work?”

They take his details and bar him from the store. It’s a similar case with the third shoplifter, the aforementioned man who has come armed with a dog. He says he has a well-paid job, but is still stealing out of necessity and shows contrition when Jamie confronts him.

“You’ve got to stop doing this because these stores are spending so much money, prices are going up and people are losing their jobs because of the cost of shoplifting,” Jamie tells him. “Do you think you’re the only one?”

Looking down at the floor, his hands in handcuffs, the thief sighs. “I’m a good man, I pay taxes,” he replies, “I apologise. I’ve learned from this. It will not happen again. “Have you done this before?” Jamie asks him. “Yeah, probably about five times. I’ve not rinsed your place. I’ve just got what I’ve needed to survive.”

Despite the area’s known criminal proclivities, the three people apprehended are not on staff’s radar.

A bigger concern is how normalised it’s becoming – the shame of stealing is no longer what it used to be. As one of the store detectives tells me: “They’re just brazen now. It used to be that people would conceal things. Now they just walk in with a big bag, fill it up and walk out.”

Worryingly, rather than the traditional cash and carry, we appear to have moved into the era of brash and carry.