EXPERT SHOP-LIFTERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19832, 30 December 1927, Page 10

EXPERT SHOP-LIFTERS.

ORGANISED GIRLS' GANGS.

CUNNING AND INGENUITY. [from our own correspondent.] SYDNEY, Dec. 22. With enormous crowds thronging the departmental stores in consequence of the Christmas shopping, girl shop-lifters are at work, and goods worth hundreds of pounds are being stolen daily. The cleverest gangs are composed of girls from 16 to 18, who show cunning aijd ingenuity in their methods. Sometimes in twos, sometimes in threes. Occasionally as many as five work together. Tho invariable custom is to cluster round a table. While one does the work, the rest talk animatedly, at the same time watching the shop detectives, and using cQ,de words to warn the girl who is doing the thioving. Even though some members of the gangs are known to the police they manage to evade the law by means of confederates, who follow them into tho shop. These the police do not know. One of the gang who is known to the police will walk up to a table and handle an article as if examining it. She then puts it down in a position from which it can be purloined easily, and a girl who is unknown later does the actual theft.

As soon ns one member of a gang is caught, and taken-to the Police Court, where sho is generally treated as a first offender, she is dropped, and a fresh girl is introduced to take her place. The leaders of the gangs do not steal; they act as staff officers, and prepare a plan of campaign each day.

The evil is as rife in Melbourne ns it is here. A suggestion lias been made by a Melbourne barrister that table displays in shops should be abolished, and that the goods should be kept in cages. The barrister was defending two women charged with shoplifting, and he argued that the system he advocated was the only way to reduce pilfering. Imprisonment acted as no deterrent. Managers of Melbourne emporiums, however, are not impressed with the proposal. Tt is impracticable, they say, and it would throw a stigma on a very larp'o section of their customers. It would reduce trade and inconvenience the public. It would moan that 999 customers out of every thousand would be' affronted simply because the remaining one was a dishonest person. One manager claimed that the amount of shoplifting that went on was infinitesimal when comrmrpd to the volume of trade done. Out of 150.000 transactions dailv two or.three instances of theft might be detected. The cage idea was impracticable because in many classes of troods —handkerchiefs, for instance—women refused to buv without having first felt the texture of the articles. Business would be slowed down if goods had to be taken out of a cage each time. Summed up. tire opinion of emnorium managers seems to be that the only way to stop shoplifting is to inculcate fundamental honesty into the public mind.