There are fantastic forums operated under the ORIS Forum brand, that bring together like minded people in an industry sector, to discuss current trends, issues and share best practice.
One such forum is the ‘Fashion Forum’ that has over 20 key stake holders in the Retail fashion Loss Prevention world.
At a meeting around 7 years ago at this forum, it was actioned that as a group of key decision makers for national retailers, we would target high risk towns and cities that were experiencing significant crime. This may be from violence and intimidation through to shoplifting, pickpocketing or antisocial behavior.
So what is a Blitz day:
A blitz day is where national retailers, security providers, BID’s Police, and crime reduction partnerships, work together in an agreed location and target harden offenders and hot spots. The primary mission is to disrupt criminal behavior, through detection, deterrent, and detainment.
To enable this to happen, firstly we needed intelligence. This was gathered following strict compliance to current data processing regulations, Retailers pulled their data and identified key locations. These were overlayed with others, to identify a top 10 of ‘high risk’ locations.
The top 10 list was then overlayed with intelligence from BCRP’s, NBCS and Policing, to help further justify the expense and deployment for the operation.
Once we had a target location and most active days for crime, retailers, BCRPs, NBCS and Policing offered resource to attend the area and collaboratively target harden the criminals.
There would be a mix of plain clothed police, store detectives, local crime managers and rangers, through to temporary Police cells/vans made available.
The operations could be 1 day, a weekend, though to random dates in the same location over a fixed period.
The outcome – Unbelievable!
The greatest outcome was collaboration, our store teams felt safe and listened to, our security teams thrived off each other and worked together, irrespective of fascia for a common goal. One business (you know who you are) even sent their organized crime team to support in locations they didn’t even trade in, that’s how powerful this was.
The local criminals did not know what hit them, it was always a great success, and we must continue to work together, now more than ever to support our staff, business, local policing, BCRPs and our community. As such, we as Lodge, and myself personally are committed to support and bring back these days of action.
Call to action
So our call to action is this, whether a retailer, BCRP, BID or security provider, together we are stronger, forget the politics, forget the commercial advantages, forget personalities, forget the past, this is about our people and doing the right thing. So, sign up and we will be in touch shortly with further information and meeting dates to get this underway!