Co-op to introduce secure tills and AI tech to combat rising crime

The Co-op is reportedly set to install more than 200 secure till kiosks, locked cabinets for bottles of spirits and AI technology to monitor self-checkouts amid rising in-store crime. 

According to The Guardian, the move comes after a 44% surge in retail crime last year, with incidents reaching about 1,000 a day.

The retailer said its undercover security guards detained 3,361 individuals across its stores last year for a range of offences including burglary, abuse and harassment.

Despite spending £200m on new security measures, including additional guards and a roving undercover team targeting crime “hotspots”, the group reported a 48% rise in shoplifting incidents to almost 298,000.

Matt Hood, managing director of the Co-op’s food business, said this was “not a few opportunistic shoplifters becoming more prolific” but was instead “organised crime and looting”.

In some stores, staff face as many as two or three incidents a week of thieves jumping the till counter to steal alcohol, cigarettes and lottery cards, according to Hood.

He said such stores were “rendered unprofitable” until new security measures were introduced, but noted the Co-op was not using facial recognition systems.

The Co-op previously warned that the current level of “out-of-control” crime is unsustainable and could see some communities become “no-go areas” for local stores. 

In light of this, it called on all police forces and crime commissioners to target prolific offenders and local organised criminal gangs to “reverse the existing environment in many cities where they operate without fear of being caught or charged”.

Last year, the retail industry demanded that the government create a standalone offence of assaulting or abusing retail workers, with tougher sentences for offenders to act as a deterrent.  

Hood said: “People who are really organised can only be stopped by custodial sentences and the police. We need it to have consequences. The thing that concerns me more than anything is that we have colleagues who won’t bother to report [incidents] as they know they are not going to get a reaction.

“If you have detained somebody that has committed a crime and the police don’t turn up, you have to let them go. You can imagine how demotivating that is for people working in the shop and how motivating [it is] for shoplifters.”