People Powered
By Graham Parker | Published: 01 January, 2010
There’s no denying that CCTV systems are a vital part of shopping centre security. Technology improves on a yearly basis, providing clearer images and digital formatting. But CCTV, regardless of its quality, is not enough to prevent and deter crime. Centres need people feeding information from ground level if they want to root out trouble makers for good. While accredited security guards are one form of manned guarding, several centres are putting some of the responsibility into the hands of the retailers.
When management at The Thistles Shopping Centre in Stirling reviewed their CCTV security system, things weren’t running as smoothly as hoped. The contractor, Shopsafe, was managing the radio link system remotely via civilian CCTV operators. But according to centre manager Colin Moulson, this was all a little too remote – to the point of being virtually inactive.
“This system had become more and more ineffective due to it being both poorly managed and monitored by the contractor and the civilian operators,” he explains. “Consequently, it was not creating the deterrent environment that a system of this nature should. We couldn’t move forward with it because it wasn’t good enough value for our retailers. They would contact the control room and get no answer.”
The controversy surrounding service charges has prompted management and landlords to demonstrate its value to their tenants. This was a tough call when only 30 out of The Thistles’ 95 retailers signed up to the old security system, lowering its value for the centre as a whole. “It was part of the service charge: retailers were paying for it so it should have been working. Word got round and there was little confidence in the system.”
After researching other options, Moulson and his DTZ centre management team introduced a radio scheme last February, monitored and managed in-house, which every retailer is now involved in.
“In effect it became ‘mandatory’ for our retailers to participate,” says Moulson, adding that although this sounds risky, the outcome is well worth it. “Making subscription compulsory is a risk and it did put some retailers off at first. But we wanted to be able to say to our tenants: ‘Here’s what we’re doing for you.’ It’s a very good box to tick considering the current problems. Shopping centres aren’t the cheapest place for retailers to be trading, so we wanted to show them the benefits of being here.”
networking
What separates the current system from the old is that it connects every retailer via radio link not only to the control room but to each other. Sales staff throughout the centre can listen to incoming reports from other stores and keep a lookout for people matching the descriptions.
“The impact was clear from the very first day,” says facilities manager Scott Wells. The morning after the new system went active, a team of professional thieves had been making their way around the centre’s major fashion operators.
“A message went round on the radio, and the sales team at Ernest Jones heard the descriptions and caught them walking past their store with hundreds of pounds of stolen goods,” says Wells.
And in another example, a neighbouring shopping centre had been hit with fraudulent vouchers. The security team at The Thistles passed on a description of the vouchers through the radio link, and retailers were able to recognise and refuse them.
“It would never have worked with CCTV because we wouldn’t have got a description of the vouchers, or been able to immediately pass information around to everyone,” adds Wells. “Our current system works because it involves a network of people. We still have CCTV in place but we can’t rely on it.”
A closer look at the crime figures seems to back up Wells’ claims. Between January and July 2008, staff reported 569 thefts at the centre. After launching the new system, the number of reported thefts rose to 950 in the first six months of 2009. Whether the recession has impacted on crime levels or not, this is a vast difference and most likely the result of a better security system, combining CCTV with people on the ground.
“Technology is moving at a rapid pace, but you can’t beat people communicating with each other,” asserts Moulson. “We needed to get something that we were far more in control of and the speed with which retailers and the security team react is amazing. Every retailer in the centre knows within minutes when there has been a crime.”
Retailers Against Crime (RAC) – an information sharing initiative across Scotland, Northern Ireland, North East England and Cumbria – has been involved in the Thistles Partners Against Crime project. The idea behind RAC was to build a national database enabling every shopping centre in the country to identify known criminals and professional teams. Moulson is keen for his centre’s retailer initiative to be rolled out in this way. “Retailers Against Crime has seen a lot of benefits from our scheme and is very interested in getting other centres to do something similar.”
Another pioneer in retail crime prevention, Rubie Charalambous, has been working on the multiagency initiative NBIS (National Business Information System) since it’s launch in 2008. Originally set up as a scheme for town centre managers, NBIS is now used in over 60 towns, cities and shopping centres. It has affiliates in local authorities, councils, police forces and shopping centre management.
Charalambous launched the initiative as town centre manager at Walthamstow to root out crime and anti-social behaviour in the area. Local businesses pay for the software package – a radio link system provided by Hicom – and communicate reports of crime or anti-social behaviour. Any time an offence takes place it is recorded on the system, and every subscriber can listen in to police interviews and descriptions of the criminals.
“Historical information is built up of a known offender, such as whereabouts he is operating and what he is doing at any given time. We can track these criminal because we are all connected,” explains Charalambous.
Leading the way
And at the epicentre is The Brewery in Romford, where the system is housed. “This is the first time a shopping centre has been able to take the lead and influence how security works in the town centre,” asserts Charalambous, who is currently centre manager at The Brewery and chair of NBIS. Her impetus seems to derive from experience dealing with local authorities – “councils are notoriously slow” – and wanting to capture the movements of criminals across the country.
“It’s the first model of it’s kind,” says Charalambous. “Other centres, like Bluewater, have self-contained security systems. These are great, but the difficult bit is getting centres to talk to each other. Some just aren’t interested because it means going outside the normal way of working.” But she is confident that, with The Brewery leading the way, other centres will follow on.
“The package is affiliated by Retailers Against Crime and goes through another organization, Action Against Retail Crime, so it’s completely authentic. It puts everybody in touch with everybody else.,” Charalambous continues.
“The police are not solely responsible for lowering crime levels – we all need to support each other in this. While the initial outlay is expensive, it’s nothing compared to the amount businesses might end up losing in stolen goods.”
The next challenge for Charalambous is a nationwide rollout. “Since the downturn began, we’ve seen a rise in different groups of people committing retail crime: the elderly, for example. Criminals aren’t as obvious anymore.
“But NBIS gives you a whole range of statistics that you wouldn’t get otherwise. Police collect figures on big crimes, but not crimes in retail. With information collected from people in the stores and businesses, police can check our reports alongside their own and put two and two together.”
