London Shops Are Giving Employees Bodycams to Fight Against Shoplifting

Retail stores in the United Kingdom are reportedly resorting to using bodycams to help fight against an increase in shoplifting, among other efforts.

Chain stores like Tesco, Primark, and Sainsbury’s have supplied their employees with small cameras along with adding more security guards and surveillance cameras, according to Fox News. Other, smaller businesses have also reportedly followed suit.

“Recently, we’ve had a massive increase in the cases of shoplifting,” one London business owner told Fox News. "Where it used to be three to five incidents in the week, now we’re suffering from anywhere to three to 10 a day. It’s very much out of control."

Sainsbury’s initially started handing out bodycams to employees as part of a shoplifting-fighting pilot program effort in 2018, but says that “colleagues now wear cameras in every Sainsbury’s store.”

Britain has been facing an “epidemic” of shoplifting, according to department store leadership in the country. Authorities have been called upon to take action, but so far stores say they are mostly fending for themselves.

“It's become an epidemic. Sadly, in the last year we've seen twice as many offenses,” Sharon White, chair of the multi-supermarket-owning John Lewis Partnership, reportedly told BBC Radio in an interview. She added that her company’s many department stores risk becoming “a looting ground for emboldened shoplifters and organized gangs."

Supermarket chain Tesco’s chief executive Ken Murphy wrote in an opinion piece for the Daily Mail that while "money spent on making sure people are safe at work is always well spent… it should not have to be like this.”

“Crime is a scourge on society and an insult to shoppers and retail workers.” Murphy wrote. “I want those who break the law in our stores brought to book”

Shoplifting has also long been an issue in America, but recently it has reportedly been getting dangerous for retail workers in the United States to try to combat it. Store managers have lost their lives attempting to thwart retail theft, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Inventory loss totaled $94.5 billion in 2021 in America, according to the latest annual report by the National Retail Federation. Organized retail crime has played a big role in America’s shoplifting woes as well, the federation says.