“I’ve had someone pull a knife on me outside the shop. Six times we’ve been broken into.”
Cobbler Vince Ayris, 62, is a former boxer and says he can handle himself in most situations, but the frequent raids on his shoe repair shop frustrate him.
“It does annoy us when we get hit. Someone nicked all my leather insoles the other day.”
Too often, criminals get away with it; that’s the overwhelming verdict from shopkeepers like Vince on Swindon high street – and that was also the finding of our exclusive national YouGov crime survey.
The first study of its kind, it reveals the extent of public concern over how crime is policed, and the experiences of victims, but it also asks what police officers think.
While more than half the public is confident the police investigate major crimes such as violence and sexual offences, confidence plummets to just 14% when it comes to lesser crimes like shoplifting.
Havelock Street in Swindon is like any high street in any town centre in Britain, and shop owners here feel under siege.
Vince has set up what he calls Meerkat, a shopkeepers’ alliance to quickly share information on thieves in the area.
As he buffs shoes and repairs heels, Vince says: “I would say shoplifting has gone up and we’re looking for support from the police to help and guide us because some of them are violent as well.
“I think people look at the police in a different way now. The uniform’s not as respected, like it used to be.”
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On the beat on Swindon high street, Police Constable Roshni Thapa amiably says “Hi Kev” to a man on a bench, and he rains expletives back at her. “Okay, mind your language,” she tells him.
She has been an officer in the town for four years. She says the abuse does not bother her, adding: “He’s not in a good mood. I’ve known him for years. It is what it is.”
PC Thapa is clearly among the 84% of those working in the police who are proud of their job, but our national survey also found just 29% feel appreciated by the public and 82% believe the public has an inaccurate perception of what they do, largely because of the media.
PC Thapa says: “You will always have someone who will speak negatively about the police or yourself, maybe they’ve had a bad experience with the police before, but that’s not always the case. There are people who appreciate you and respect you.”
Our poll found 62% of the public do trust ordinary police officers but it falls to 48% for their bosses, and there is a strong public feeling that the police spend too little time in the community.
Virtually all police officers agree and feel they are understaffed and underfunded, with three-quarters saying there is too much bureaucracy.
Asked if she would like to spend more time on the beat, PC Thapa is emphatic. “Of course, 1,000%. This is where I guess the frustration is within the community, that maybe we’re not out on the beat that often. But it’s not because we don’t want to. It’s because we are tied up with the paperwork.”
Even so, PC Thapa seems to know the name of every shopkeeper on her beat, and it’s not long before she and her partner are called over by a member of the public to deal with a stolen bike.
The national survey finds only 40% of those who reported a crime were satisfied with the police handling, compared to 50% dissatisfied. Of those who didn’t report a crime, the most common reason was that it would not be investigated.
People who experienced crime in Swindon talked of a general acceptance that reporting it would not come to much.
One woman who reported her purse stolen from her car said: “I think maybe they could have done more because there probably was footage. But yeah, they didn’t take it much further.”
Most people said they would report a crime, but one supermarket worker seemed exasperated at how often his shop had to do it. “It’s terrible, absolutely terrible,” he says, describing the shoplifters as “organised gangs”.
Kelly Archer, who runs Rowen’s Closet Arcadia, tells us she’d had crystals and even wands stolen. “You won’t get good karma from a stolen wand.”
She adds: “We need more funding and more policing.
“At the minute you barely see anybody on the street and when you do it’s like, ‘oh, oh look at that’, I can see them, that’s amazing, and it is like, ‘it’s a miracle’.”
Nationally, shoplifting is on the rise – but our survey found most people think all crime is increasing, which is not the case.
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The neighbourhood policing team in Swindon say they take all crimes seriously. Acting Inspector Tristan Winter has been in policing for nearly 20 years.
He says: “No crime is too small. Sometimes, when you take care of the lower-level crime, it stops some of the bigger crime.
“In retail crime, people are grafting, trying to earn a living, and they shouldn’t be impacted by the abuse and the theft that happens within shops. So, I don’t think lower-level crime is the right terminology. They’re all equally as important to the individual that suffered them.”
Watch The UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee: Is policing fit for purpose? at 8pm on Thursday
