Supermarket Violence – Retail Crime and Attacks on Staff

Supermarket violence including vicious assaults on staff is becoming a daily problem across the North Island.

 

Serious incidents such as burglary, assault, robbery, and other aggressive, violent, and threatening behaviour has increased by 36 per cent in the last year.

 

Retail crime rates have increased by 37.8 per cent for the same period. This equates to a total of 3285 incidents of retail crime or around 37 incidents a day. Shoplifting has also increased by 57 per cent.

 

Supermarket giant Foodstuffs who run 330 supermarkets across NZ have released video footage showing the disturbing behaviour of offenders. One offender is even wielding an iron bar and attacking workers.

 

Check out the video and full article here from NZ Herald

“Retail crime is coming through the front doors of grocery stores and impacting our teams every day. Grocers are focused on keeping their people safe. That means investing in de-escalation and conflict management training. Helping people to cope in a situation which involves aggression,” says Quin.

 

“I see the reports of what our store owners and their people are dealing with on a daily basis. It’s distressing when we have people threatening our team members with weapons and throwing punches. Every New Zealander has the right to work in a safe and secure environment. And not be threatened, assaulted, spat on, yelled at, or racially abused as they go about their working day.”

 

“To really address this complex issue, we need strong collaboration between Government, Police, community leaders and business owners. Our grocers and our co-operative is committed to working together with communities to tackle retail crime.”

 

The FoodStuffs group includes New World, PaK’nSave and Four Square stores.