Pret a Manger has turn into the newest excessive avenue staple to deploy body-worn cameras for a few of its employees.
The espresso and bakery chain started trialling body-worn cameras in a choose variety of outlets in London final month. A Pret spokesperson stated this was performed as a brand new security measure. “These are solely being worn by workforce leaders or managers, and are solely turned on in particular circumstances,” the spokesperson stated.
Indicators have been put up in outlets conducting the trial to let clients know. The cameras won’t all the time be recording and can solely be switched on in particular circumstances. This can be on the discretion of administration in-store. Solely Pret’s safety workforce could have entry to any footage captured, the chain confirmed.
Pret a Manger is just not the one chain to supply body-worn cameras to employees. Final 12 months, Tesco started providing the cameras to members of employees after it stated bodily assaults had risen by a 3rd in a 12 months.
The Co-op has put in greater than 200 safe until kiosks, locked cupboards for bottles of spirits and AI expertise in its supermarkets to watch self-checkouts after a 44% surge in retail crime final 12 months to about 1,000 incidents a day.
The brand new initiatives come as store staff within the UK face rising abuse within the office. Earlier this 12 months, a survey by the British Retail Consortium, the commerce physique that represents most main retailers, discovered that store staff had been going through 1,300 incidents of violence and abuse a day.
Retailers skilled a 50% rise within the variety of incidents of racial abuse, sexual harassment, bodily assaults and threats with weapons final 12 months, whereas thefts greater than doubled to 16.7m incidents.
The rise in retail crime has coincided with a interval of rampant worth inflation, with the price of on a regular basis items from eggs to child system rising over the previous two years at a price not skilled since data started within the Seventies, leaving many households struggling to make ends meet.
Final October, virtually 90 retail leaders, together with the bosses of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Boots and WH Smith, wrote to the federal government demanding motion on rising retail crime, by which violent criminals are “emptying shops”.
“The police constantly inform us {that a} lack of knowledge about these offences means they haven’t any visibility in regards to the nature or scale of the difficulty,” the letter says.
Final September, Sharon White, the chair of John Lewis Partnership, which owns John Lewis and Waitrose, described shoplifting within the UK as an “epidemic”.
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