Sussex police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne has shared exclusive insights on the new shoplifting action plan Pegasus, which officially launched last week.

The Pegasus project involves to 13 major retailers, including Co-op and Next, partnering with a specialist unit within the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s (NPCC) to launch the first dedicated national unit for shoplifting incidents.

It is the first time a dedicated national unit has been created for shoplifting incidents, and will involve six new intelligence analysts reviewing information from CCTV, number plate recognition, dashcam footage and more to capture prolific shoplifters from the 13 retailers.

Is there anything new to Pegasus that independent retailers should be aware of?

The Pegasus project doesn’t expect to have any tangible stuff until the new year. But if there’s an organised crime group [OCG] operating in a store, a retailer would have to reach out to their police, but what the police don’t do at the moment is link up that gang to other [regions], and see if they are operating in other police force areas.

The whole point of the group of retailers coming together – the Pegasus group is prepared to work with policing, [retailers], and we’ll share the data across our own – our own commercial organisations. And we’ll share that data with policing in a way that policing can consume it. We can make it effective. We can build intelligence packages, we can map the OCGs. And then we can talk about effective enforcement.

How did the idea of Pegasus come about?

Retailers asked me how we get policing to be taken more seriously, [and] I reached out to chief constable Amanda Blake, who’s the national police chief’s lead for serious and acquisitive crime. I told her [Pegasus] is exactly what we need in local [areas], and retailers want to support it or give more [of their] resources to make it worthwhile. Before, you’d have to go to one of the 43 individual police forces.

This is what Opal [the national intelligence unit for organised acquisitive crime] should’ve been doing, but they weren’t resourced sufficiently to be able to do that in any manner. Data can be shared [through Pegasus] which can build a picture of the real threat that’s happening from some of these OCGs across the whole of England and Wales.

ONS reported a 25% increase in reports of shoplifting in the year ending June 2023. How does the ongoing increase in shoplifting impact your mission?

It gives more impetus to it, for me. As depressing as those numbers are, I’m not surprised. I don’t know if it’s an increase or if more [retailers] are reporting [shoplifting incidents]. Shoplifting is having a corrosive effect on our high streets without a doubt. It’s hurting hardworking family businesses, making shop owners more fearful, and putting the price of goods up for the rest of us.

We urgently need a different approach to this that combines retail industry knowledge with tougher enforcement and swifter justice. Because we’ve got to make our shops safe for shop workers and for customers. And we’ve got to make them hostile zones for these criminals who are just brazen.

What would you advise retailers do if they are reporting incidents to the police and have tried to form a relationship with their PCC, but aren’t seeing successful results?

It’s disappointing to hear that. I think sometimes, part of the problem can often be that the PCCs office is too big and efficient. As much as it depends on how the retailer approaches [the PCC], if it’s an operational policing issue, they may be told to contact the police about it.

And sometimes, the PCC themselves isn’t even aware of it. So, there were a couple of retailers at [ACS Heart of the Community] who had a similar story. And I said to them, look without inundating me, contact me yourself with your issue, and I will reach out to my colleagues.

When [retailers] reach out to their PCC, they should ask them if they have a safer business partnership they can belong to. This way they can get their voices heard. A couple of years ago, I set up a Safer Sussex Business Partnership, we meet on a quarterly basis, and I bring together all my retailers – including independent ones. The police and business crime reduction plan [BCRP] are also represented there. We talk about local issues and find local solutions. I’m encouraging my PCC colleagues to set up a safer business partnership themselves.

Retailers are spending money from their own reserves on security systems. Are you pushing for potential funding initiatives?

I’m not pushing for funding around [grants for retailers]. But government has a lot of access to safer streets fund – I specifically asked if we could use some of that towards business crime.

I was able to put funding towards my BCRP, and help them put in the disk app system, whereby they can report crimes to each other and share with police more effectively. We also used it to target harden shop fronts, in an attractive way. In Hastings for example, a couple of the stores has some really attractive railings for their shop windows [installed] – protective but decorative.

I’d really like to see some of the funding the government have given police forces for retail crime hotspot policing, where a particular high street or store has come under pressure from shoplifting. It’s being a bit smarter with the resources they’ve got.

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