Feral shoplifters attack us with used needles & mallets… catching a thief revealed sinister underworld pulling strings

STUFFING a second child’s toy down her parka jacket, the brazen thief races to the door and down the high street chased by two seething shopkeepers.

She’s just one of countless crooks plaguing businesses in Truro, Cornwall, where shoplifters have pilfered over an estimated million pounds worth of goods this year alone.

The embattled traders have been forced to take matters into their own hands, risking their lives by chasing down thieves – despite some wielding mallets, used needles and broken bottles.

Businesses fear the shoplifting ‘epidemic’ in their home, the UK’s southernmost city, is feeding a dangerous underworld of drug-dealing and county lines gangs.

One terrified woman who got caught red-handed told how she was ordered to steal by a county lines hardman, and many organised groups are armed with tag-cutters.

Enraged business owners claim police in the town, famed for its
breathtaking cathedral and gothic architecture, don’t offer them
enough support in tackling the issue.

Martin Gaunt runs gift shop Happy Piranha, in Prydar Street, with twin sons Sam and Josh, 33, and actively chases down culprits to try to retrieve stolen goods.

They have 12 CCTV cameras covering the shop and entrance and have installed cabinets to display many items.

Martin says: “Shoplifting is an artery feeding the worst criminals you’re likely to ever encounter.

“It feeds the drug dealer and enslaves the addict. It feeds into organised crime, and we have had direct experience of that.

“We stopped one young lady and quite often the response can be tearful, but on this occasion, we found it to be a little bit more genuine.

“We sat her down, we gave her a cup of tea, and she started to explain that it wasn’t us that she was worried about.

“It wasn’t the police. It was the fact that she was actually being run by a county lines drugs gang out of Leicester.

“She was being used to go into one store after another store to steal things, and the money would be fed up to them.

“Now the problem is, because that shoplifting is allowed to go on, it makes her a valuable tool to these people, and it leads to all sorts of other abuse.

“She confided in us that she had been abused physically and even probably more scary, used to carry firearms ammunition.

“Very sadly I’ve heard since then that she’s now dead.”

Weapon-clad crooks

Happy Piranha used to be targeted daily, but that’s been reduced to around once a week since the extra cameras were installed.

Martin and his sons carry radios to call each other and never involve staff in their chases to claw back items before they are sold to either a local market stall holder or even other stores for ready cash.

“Nine out of ten times they’ll drop what they’ve taken, but there are times when we’ve been in trouble,” Martin says.

“I’m 61 years old. I don’t really go out looking for trouble, but I’m still nursing bruised ribs from rolling around the floor with an 18-year-old back in December.

“They do carry weapons, from mallets to hammers and knives. We’ve even had a bag of needles swung at us from time to time, threatened with a used needle and a staff member was threatened with a broken bottle.

“When people don’t agree to giving the products back or being searched, we try to use our powers of civil arrest.

If I catch anyone pinching I won’t ring the police, but I will ring the ambulance. No kidding

Words on a Truro sign

“This will normally happen because they don’t want to be searched because they’re carrying a weapon or drugs.

“We do need the police to attend, and we do log every theft, but we’ve not had satisfactory responses from them.

“I spend one day a week dealing with shoplifting, logging it, giving descriptions and downloading the CCTV images onto a memory stick, just so it can sit on a desk for six months when the police don’t collect it.

“I have great admiration for anyone who puts a police uniform on every day, and I’m very grateful. But I’m frustrated by the lack of response.

“Part of my frustration with the police from my experience in Truro is that the communication with the community just is not there, so we must deal with it ourselves.

“We’re always concerned about safety. It’s like bullying. If you’re going to repeatedly get a beating, then you have no option but to stand your ground.

“I am no advocate of have-a-go-heroes but I do believe it’s time that retailers that can, need to make a stand. Yes, it’s scary, and I fear a lot for my children.

“I’ve had members of staff go home tearful because of what they’re seeing happening and it’s something I wish wouldn’t happen, but I’m not too sure we can easily shy away from it. There’s a well-known saying, which is ‘for evil to prevail it just takes a few good people to do nothing’.”

Million-pound spree

Martin estimates more than a £1million in goods have been stolen from Truro businesses within a year, based on local reports – including one shop that claimed the crime cost them a staggering £170,000.

The businessman suspects the figure barely scratches the surface as only one in three incidences are generally reported.

Inside the local Pannier Market, shop owner Paul Dockree, 50, runs DPS Electrical, and tells how stock regularly ‘disappears’.

He said: “I’m not at all surprised by the estimate of a million of goods being stolen in the past year.

“We’ve been trading for more than 40 years and the increase in theft over the last couple of years is dramatically more than it’s ever been.

“It’s difficult for me to quantify how often it happens to us, but we use a computerised system and when we’re out of stock and the computer says there should be two left on the shelf, then we know it’s been stolen.

“It’s a problem for most of the traders in the market.

“We also have problems with gangs of teens riding their bikes through here, doing wheelies, grabbing things of stalls and just running riot, which we report to the police, but it doesn’t stop them coming back.”

‘No point ringing police’

One local businessman, Jack Harvey, has come up with an innovative way to deter thieves from his land, where he rents out space.

Close to the ‘Welcome to Truro’ road sign he has erected his own sign that reads: “If I catch anyone pinching I won’t ring the police, but I will ring the ambulance. No kidding.”

He said: “I rent my yard out because I’m retired. I have a film studio which has a studio here, they make films in Paris, Belgium, Germany and Cornwall.

“They have a lot of equipment, and I don’t want people in here pinching.

“There’s no point ringing the police. I caught somebody once breaking in here, I took him away and as I was walking him out he took out a knife.

“I took the knife away from him and the police came, put him up against the wall and searched him.

“I took the knife up to the policeman who took it off me and gave it back to him, saying ‘that’s his’. The police didn’t come back.

“So, it would be better if I’d have given him a hiding instead.”

Ranger danger

The town of Truro, which has a population of 21,000 people, has town rangers, who patrol the city centre for 56 hours a week, wearing hi-vis red vests and body cams.

One ranger, Jack Vincent, 25, tells The Sun: “The ranger’s role is primarily to reduce the risk of the shop owners being assaulted or threatened, to keep them safe and stop them having to ring the police about shoplifting if we can deal with it and pass it onto police if needed.”

The role doesn’t come without its own risks, though.

Shoplifting is an artery feeding the worst criminals you’re likely to ever encounter

Martin Gaunt

Fellow ranger Will Garside, 27, admits he has been assaulted: “I was punched in the face in November last year, but contact is a rarity, not an everyday thing. Contact doesn’t happen very often.”

Our interview was cut short as the pair were called to deal with a situation involving some street drinkers and rough sleepers next to the river. After a brief, seemingly heated discussion, the group was moved on.

Community’s ‘disgust’

Despite the city’s struggles, there are ongoing efforts to help businesses, as Alun Jones, who is the Business Improvement District (BID) manager, tells us.

A BID aims to connect businesses who can raise funds locally to spend on local improvements, attracting more local people and tourists to the town or city.

In Truro more than 380 local businesses are members and the BID has raised £3.5 million to spend on the city in the past ten years.

Alun says: “Like any town centre Truro does have an issue with shop-lifting.

“It does have an impact on the retailer, some of our retailers do report anti-social behaviour and have felt under pressure when thieves come into their stores.

“I think shoplifting does affect the sense of community. The average person would be disgusted by the behaviour of the minority.

“It really is a shame thieves think they are entitled to take goods without payment, most of us work hard for a living.

“The advice we give is that prevention is the best way to tackle it, so things like a meeter-greeter, front door presence at any retailer, is really positive.

“Thieves like to be invisible so seeing the customer as they come in, offering service, offering baskets to try to prevent the crime in the first place.

“Obviously if a store does fall victim, they should make sure they report it to the police. If police know about all incidents they can investigate.

I was punched in the face in November last year, but contact is a rarity

Will Garside

“We have a Shop Watch team, we get together each month so retailers can talk to each other and the police, so they can share intelligence of names and descriptions of offenders.

“It’s a small number of individuals causing a large amount of the crime, so if we were to deal with these people more robustly, we might see a quicker reduction.

“We do have support from the police, which we are grateful for, however police numbers are insufficient in real terms, and we would like to see more police presence and more intervention with the worst of the individuals causing the problems.”

Fighting back

Devon and Cornwall Police Neighbourhood Team Leader Sergeant Dave Pearce told The Sun they could not comment on individual cases but have worked with local businesses to reduce crime.

They encourage all shop owners to report incidents – including through the DISC system, 101, online, Crimestoppers and 999 in an emergency – to help build “a true reflection of [the] volume of crime occurrence” and to assist police, ASB team and Truro Rangers.

He explained there were targeted days of action to combat crime, interaction with businesses generally and attendance of local Shopwatch meetings, where shop owners can discuss concerns and alert them to “individuals they believe are targeting businesses”.

Sgt Pearce continued: “Each incident will be dealt with by assessing the individual circumstances of the report and the person involved.

“A THRIVE assessment will also be applied to the report looking at the immediate threat, risk and harm of the ongoing incident and a grading added by the assessing operator.

“If there is no immediate threat the incident will be recorded and assessed by the crime management investigation team.

“The victim will be contacted and evidence gathered and the report progressed. If there is an immediate risk officers will be dispatched to the incident.

“We are committed to diverting offenders away from the criminal justice system and reduce the risk of them being involved in criminal activity.

“Officers will assess the disposal options available to them and will engage with the victim to keep them fully informed of the likely outcome for the investigation.

“We are committed to tackling the concerns raised by local businesses to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour in our community.”