Should we be using the law to protect better all workers who come into contact with members of the public? Emergency workers already do have protection thanks to the previous Labour government, but shopkeepers don’t.
This week is Freedom from Fear week, a campaign organised by Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union, which is highlighting the dangers of violence and assault which shopworkers face every day in their jobs.
The problem for shop staff is getting worse with an 83 per cent rise in violence and verbal assault against retail staff in the last year, according to a report by the British Retail Consortium.
Shopkeepers are vulnerable to small changes in the economic situation of their customers and the people who live in the neighbourhood. Many shoplifters and people who commit crime in shops are persistent and repeat offenders.
Police are increasingly not responding even when there is a lot of evidence. It is a problem that is troubling prospective Labour police and crime commissioners, who are up for election next week, on 15 November.
Olly Martins who is standing to be the PCC in Bedfordshire says, ‘I was contacted by one shopkeeper and he said the response he gets [from the police] is a joke. The police turn up very infrequently when he calls them to report a crime. He’s put up loads of CCTV and has lots of evidence but it disappears into a black hole.’
Although a lot of this evidence is about shoplifting, if the police do not respond, it means small shops become places of lawlessness, particularly late at night and that puts staff at risk.
It is not necessarily the police’s fault, but rather is a result of cuts to their numbers which mean they don’t have the resources to respond, says Olly Martins. Bedfordshire police force alone is losing 261 police community support officers and police constables and the local authorities which used to help are broke. Cuts to Luton borough council’s budget for instance, a large urban area in Bedfordshire, mean the council is increasingly only able to provide statutory services.
Olly warns that as neighbourhood policing disappears, problems for shopkeepers are likely to worsen. It was PCSOs he points out who would pop into their corner shop to see what was going on. ‘They are not there any more. We are losing that local knowledge. That knowledge cuts shop crime and it cuts antisocial behaviour on estates,’ he says.
This problem is not just confined to Bedfordshire. 15,000 police officers are disappearing nationally with 20 per cent cuts to police budgets across the board. These cuts are unravelling much of what Labour put in place to combat antisocial behaviour.
And as Olly points out the government has effectively capped the police precept meaning that individual police and crime commissioners will find it impossible to raise extra money for local priorities.
That is why the Usdaw campaign is so important. It highlights shopkeepers as a particularly vulnerable group on the frontline who need protection at a time of falling police numbers and competing priorities.
In October Labour MP Graeme Morrice introduced a protection of workers bill into the House of Commons to try and give people who work with the public more legal protection. The bill has its second reading in February 2013.
By the end of next week we will have our first Labour police and crime commissioners responsible for so much. Hopefully if such a bill became law, it will give them more clout to deal with rising violence against shopworkers.
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Sally Gimson is a Labour councillor in Camden and tweets @SallyGimson. Sally Gimson