Policing of malls costly business

Press, 22 May 1986, Page 3

Policing of malls costly business

Some Christchurch shopping malls are spending more than $70,000 a year to stop shoplifters, says the regional manager of Challenge Properties, Mr Brian Keeley.

Challenge Properties owns eight shopping malls in Christchurch and Rangiora, including the Canterbury Centre, and Northlands. Mr Keeley said some retailers in those malls were losing 5 per cent of their stock each year. For a small shop with stock worth $250,000 that meant a loss of $12,500 a year. “There would be more

than one mall in this city which would lose more than $150,000 a year,” he said.

One mall employed plainclothes shop walkers, costing more than $25,000 a year.

Mr Keeley said the real problem was not schoolchildren or first-time offenders but professional shoplifters.

“I have had one tell me he makes more than $40,000 a year, just in shoplifting in Christchurch. They are very well organised.” Mr Keeley said mall

retailers often telephoned one another to say that a well-known gang of shoplifters was on its way. The problem did not lie with the police, or the security provided by the malls themselves, Mr Keeley said. The problem was that once the shoplifters were caught, they were given light sentences. “We believe it is virtually out of control because of the Courts. We catch them, and the Courts give them minimal sentences. I do not mean to be a Court slammer, but that is ex-

actly what happens,” he said. Malls were not resorting to the Trespass Act, and banning certain people, he said. Each mall had a book of people who were banned. The books were several pages long. Shopkeepers were partly to blame for some of the problem, he said. Mr Keeley said he went to a seminar on security, run by the police last year, but only about 14 people attended it. “Shopkeepers have got to brush up their act,” Mr Keeley said.