Last week, US President Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard soldiers to the streets of Washington DC, to join 500 federal agents and the 3,100-strong police force to enact his promise of ‘historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse’.
Amid this exceptional show of force, no crime was too small – so much so that five FBI agents in flak jackets ejected a homeless man from a McDonald’s.
This is what taking back the streets looks like, and I urge our politicians and police chiefs to take note.
For too long our own streets have been creches of criminality, where drug dealers, phone muggers and shoplifters have roamed with impunity, unencumbered by police forces that have all but given up on patrols. Here, the public believe you’ll only likely see an officer at your door if you misgender someone on WhatsApp.
Not for the UK a Trump-style blitz from the boys in blue – no, we the public have been asked to police the streets ourselves. This was the frankly risible suggestion made by Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber last week.
Now I happen to know and like Matthew, but it’s a howling own goal for him to chastise citizens who put their ‘head down, carry on, don’t get involved’ as making for a ‘very poor society’ when forces such as his have ‘not got involved’ with what some deem ‘petty’ crimes for several years.
Shoplifting, for instance, surged to 530,643 cases nationwide in the year ending March 2025, up a staggering 20 per cent on 2024. But the true figure will be much higher, as vast numbers of these crimes go unreported and unlogged.
Why? Because demoralised shopkeepers know from bitter, frustrating experience that police won’t bother to investigate these crimes, which makes a mockery of Assistant Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Police Jon Cummins’ advice to retailers to dial 999 rather than tackle the thieves.
Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber has suggested the public need to do more to stop crime
Shoplifting surged to 530,643 cases nationwide in the year ending March 2025, up a staggering 20 per cent on 2024
In 2014, under David Cameron, the government made shoplifting offences involving goods valued at £200 or less a summary-only offence, meaning they could only be tried in a magistrates’ court.
This move was eventually repealed, but the rot set in. In the intervening decade, the core principles of community policing – that officers are there to engage, reassure and challenge wrongdoing – have almost entirely vanished. That is what makes for a ‘very poor society’.
So, it seems, members of the public are being urged to fill these gaps in policing. Take it from me – as a former officer of 31 years, who has made 32 citizen’s arrests of shoplifters in the 16 years since I retired – don’t. My last effort won me a black eye.
Around six months ago, one of the staff at my local Waitrose pointed out a 40-something man loitering by the chiller cabinets.
Only the previous week, this man – a serial shoplifter – had hit one of the store’s security guards in the face with a bottle when he tried to apprehend him. Now here he was again, almost certainly up to no good. Indeed, as I watched on, I saw him secreting expensive sunglasses under the puffer jacket he was conspicuously wearing on a hot London day before walking out of the store, bold as brass.
As most of the supermarket staff know, I’m a retired policeman – which is one reason I took it upon myself to enact a citizen’s arrest.
Sadly, the thief punched me in the face, and I toppled backwards into a car, snapping off its wing mirror. Nonetheless, I managed to get him in a headlock and grapple him to the floor until the police arrived. Frankly, I don’t know why I bothered because the court gave him a pitiful four-week suspended sentence – that’s for three assaults (including a past tussle with a police officer), burglary and absconding bail.
In another incident reported in The Mail on Sunday last January, I received a £120 fixed-penalty fine from my local council for driving through a no-entry sign in pursuit of a fleeing shoplifter who had made off with nine expensive bottles of wine from a Sainsbury’s. My intervention meant he was arrested, but he walked away scot free after the store manager decided not to press charges – meaning that while the offender went unpunished, I was £120 out of pocket. So much for justice!
I’ve no regrets about my actions. I know the law, I don’t like watching people blatantly break it and after decades on the thin blue line, I know how to handle myself.
The same does not go for other members of the public, who risk being verbally abused, assaulted and, in the worst-case scenario, knifed if they try to intervene.
Even security guards, often poorly trained and paid, are no longer a deterrent. Retail giants know this, which is why in general they instruct them to prioritise their safety over stock.
If this is the rule for security guards, then it beggars belief that we should ask the public to behave differently.
And make no mistake, shoplifting is not about the cost-of-living crisis – much as the liberal Left may want to suggest that spiralling prices are driving mums to steal to feed their children.
The reality is that much of it is either blatantly opportunistic, or in many instances fuelled by large-scale, well-coordinated crime consortiums, through which thieves are recruited to steal high-value goods to be resold through organised networks.
Last November, it emerged that a group of four men had stolen £120,000 worth of goods from over 50 Morrisons, which were then funnelled into a Romanian-backed smuggling ring and sold via wholesalers and car-boot markets.
Nor is it a victimless crime. The retail industry faces official annual losses around £2.2 billion (my belief is it’s five times that), alongside an additional £1.8 billion spent on security measures.
Then there’s the human cost, from the small businesses sent to the wall by expensive lost stock and the 1,300 retail staff who are assaulted or abused every day.
So if have-a-go heroes are not the answer, nor calling in the Army as Trump has done, how can the authorities get a grip of our streets again?
We need a massive overhaul of the way we treat offenders. Police should attend every report of shoplifting, and there should be tough penalties for those convicted – especially repeat offenders. There has to be a deterrent.
The retail security industry also needs to be modernised, with security guards comprised of ex-military, rigorously trained in self-defence and conflict resolution and issued with handcuffs and tasers.
That is how serious and dangerous shoplifting has become.
And if the Government, police and courts cannot seize this issue, then maybe Trump is right. Maybe the Army is the only answer?
