Asda chairman, Lord Stuart Rose, has said the supermarket will not be offering body worn cameras to all staff, despite the current surge in retail crime.
Speaking with LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast, Rose said that Asda doesn’t use body worn cameras “unilaterally”.
“I don’t really want to get to a world where you sit down and everybody’s photographing everybody else for whatever action they take. That’s not a good place to be, but we do have to be careful about how our staff are exposed to dangers.”
"I don't want to get to a world where everybody is photographing everybody else…"
Asda Chairman Lord Stuart Rose condemns the use of body cameras for supermarket staff.@NickFerrariLBC pic.twitter.com/GuCMD8ysfa
— LBC (@LBC) September 5, 2023
However, he agreed that Tesco CEO Ken Murphy’s call for harsher punishments and changes to policing “is very important”, adding its particularly vital “with regard to staff safety”.
Earlier this week, Tesco began offering body cameras to all store workers as physical assault cases on staff at the leading retailer have soared to more than 200 each month.
Rose told LBC: “Theft is a big issue. It has become decriminalised. It has become minimised. It’s actually just not seen as a crime anymore, we’ve become risk averse.”
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The comments come as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) found that abuse against retail workers has nearly doubled than that of pre-Covid levels.
Rose explained that he’d “like to see something done”, however “exactly what and how, that’s always the problem”, he added.
“We should make it very clear to people coming into shops that if we do catch them stealing things, we will prosecute them if we can.”
This comes as many of the UK’s leading supermarkets are looking to tackle rising levels of retail crime.
Last month, Waitrose began offering free coffees to police officers, hoping the ‘thanks a latte’ initiative will reduce thefts by encouraging law enforcement to make stops in stores.
The Co-op is also extending its trial of anti-theft ‘dummy display packaging’ for some of its targeted products, while some Aldi stores in the UK are ensuring that checkout staff inspect shopping bags for stolen items.
2 Comments. Leave new
good lord why not
Obviously Lord Stuart Rose doesn’t care about the protection of his staff.