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Shoplifters are escaping justice because storekeepers are refusing to hand over CCTV to prosecute them, a Metropolitan Police chief has insisted.
England and Wales has been gripped by a shoplifting epidemic in recent years with offences soaring by five per cent in the year to September 2025, reaching 519,381, as per the latest ONS figures.
In London alone, more than 100,000 offences were recorded in the year to October 2025, up significantly from 58,000 in 2023.
And few thieves end up being prosecuted, with the Met reporting that 5.9 per cent of shoplifting incidents recorded by them led to a charge in the year ending March 2025.
Ch Insp Rav Pathania, the Metropolitan Police’s head of business crime, has now laid the blame at the door of retail managers, claiming that if they released more footage of offences then officers would be able to clamp down on crime.
He said: It’s not just the Met – the problem is country-wide. We don’t always get digital evidence back from the retailers. We request CCTV, body-worn video footage, statements from the retailers, but we don’t always get that back.
‘So when we’re trying to solve more crimes, the way we solve them is by getting evidence. So last year, for example, in approximately 80 per cent of our crimes, we never got CCTV – and so it’s really difficult to investigate a crime where you don’t have the digital evidence.’
Mr Pathania added that in cases where shopkeepers did pass on footage, cops could identify 80 per cent of suspects by running the images through databases and matching them with previous offenders using facial recognition technology.
He went on to admit that since Covid, the Met has prioritised a crackdown on violent crime over reducing shoplifting and similar ‘acquisitive’ offences.
Mr Pathania insisted that the force had almost doubled its detection rates, increasing arrests of shoplifters by 44 per cent over the past year.
The Met chief’s words echo those of his boss Sir Mark Rowley who in February was questioned by the Home Affairs Committee on thieves who regularly ‘clear whole shelves’ and walk out of shops without paying.
The Met Commissioner blamed the shoplifting epidemic on storekeepers – insisting they ‘don’t report anything’ and ‘need to do better’.
The police chief said: ‘We’re determined to bear down on this. I recognise a very variable response from shops to shoplifting in their premises.
‘We encourage them all to report it and the good stores have got really good security regimes and report it and help us out in ways that I’ll come to in a moment. Some stores don’t.’
He then added: ‘Some of them don’t report anything, if we go there they don’t give us the CCTV of the crime, they won’t give us any statements, they don’t give their staff time to give statements and they don’t pay their staff to go to court to give evidence.’
It comes after a series of high-profile shoplifting cases which have seen some perpetrators jailed for stealing up to £300,000 of goods.
In October, thief Daniel Cleveland, 33, was jailed for three years after stealing £16,000 worth of taps from B&Q in Bromley, south London.
He was caught on camera throwing the items over a fence while still on the shop premises to an accomplice.
Elsewhere Bianca Mirica, 20, was captured stuffing cosmetics into her bag as part of a £299,000 campaign which also saw her strip perfume from the shelves of a Boots in Hornchurch.
The Romanian national and mother-of-three was one of 16 people arrested as part of raids on a major shoplifting gang. She was jailed last summer for 32 months.
Another thief, Liam Hutchinson, was jailed for a year after CCTV footage saw him swipe whole shelves of Boots products into his bag, totalling £100,000.
