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The two British shopkeepers said the main protagonists were local organised criminal gangs, often hooded and masked and sometimes carrying weapons like machetes, who target higher-value products like alcohol, boxed chocolates and meat.
You know you fell at least ten miles down as a country when armed robbery is commited for british beer, chocolate and meat.
Armed robbery seems a bit extreme, but meat makes sense as a target. IIRC it is one of the most-commonly-shoplifted items from grocery stores in the US, because it provides one of the highest value densities in that store. I bet that alcohol is up there too, and with alcohol, you don't have the question of whether-or-not the product has been kept at a safe storage temperature before you got it (something that I'd think that people would be more skeptical of with black market meat, but maybe that's just my lack of familiarity with said market talking).
EDIT: Here's a list for the US; this is from 2022. Apparently the US is also seeing a surge in retail theft (due to inflation, maybe?)
And, yeah, in the grocery section, meat and alcohol are in the top target list. And candy's on there too, so it sounds like the British list is basically the same stuff that shoplifters would target in any grocery store. What's newsworthy in the UK would be the (unquantified) increase.
What austerity does to a country ...
What Brexit does to a country...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
CROYDON, England, Oct 18 (Reuters) - As shopkeeper Ben Selvaratnam recounted how his grocery store in south London was being targeted by shoplifters up to 10 times a day, he had to stop to eject two men who had brazenly slipped two bottles of premium beer into their carrier bag.
The incident, on a Tuesday morning, was unremarkable at his Freshfields Market convenience store following a "massive increase" in theft and violence that he and other shop owners put down to a lack of response from authorities to retail crime.
"We stopped reporting incidents to the police because we just felt, for whatever reason, budget cuts or whatnot, they weren't as responsive as we needed them to be," Selvaratnam told Reuters in his shop in Croydon, where his butcher doubles up as a security guard.
It's a similar story in Glasgow, Scotland, where Girish Jeeva was recently left bloodied after being punched in the face when he challenged a man stealing from his grocery store in the Barmulloch district.
The issue of theft and violence has been raised by many of Britain's biggest retailers in recent months, including Tesco (TSCO.L), John Lewis and Primark, echoing similar reports in the United States and elsewhere.
The two British shopkeepers said the main protagonists were local organised criminal gangs, often hooded and masked and sometimes carrying weapons like machetes, who target higher-value products like alcohol, boxed chocolates and meat.
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