Dozens of Northampton town centre shops sign up to be 'adopted' by police officers in new retail crime crackdown

Dozens of town centre businesses have signed up to a new scheme aimed at cutting retail crime in Northampton town centre.

The ‘Cops Adopt A Shop’ campaign, a joint initiative between Northamptonshire Police, Northampton Town Centre Business Improvement District (BID), West Northamptonshire Council and the Northamptonshire Business Crime Partnership, sees retailers given a dedicated police contact with whom they can have regular conversations.

The scheme, launched in October, aims to foster a more cohesive approach to tackling town centre crime and a closer working relationship between police officers and retailers.

Inspector Beth Curlett of the Northampton Neighbourhood Team said earlier in December: “37 shops have been adopted, with another 19 planned over the coming few weeks. All have received the literature about the scheme, and those we have adopted so far have all provided good feedback.

“It has provided a greater level of visibility within the priority area and, as relationships progress, I am confident we will see an increase in intelligence.”

The project will also see refocussed police involvement in the Northampton Retail Crime Initiative (NRCI) and the Northampton Town Anti-Social Behaviour Reporting Scheme (NTARS) – a mobile app for reporting anti-social behaviour issues and sharing business crime intelligence, funded by the BID and free for use by all BID levy-paying businesses.

Mark Mullen is the operations manager of Northampton Town Centre BID - an organisation run by business owners to make Northampton a better place to live, shop and work.

He said: “For many businesses, perceptions of retail crime and anti-social behaviour is their number one concern.

“The ‘Cops Adopt A Shop’ scheme is a way to address those concerns and bring businesses closer to the police so they can work together to identify repeat offenders and protect their business, their staff and their customers from the threat of crime.

“The early signs have been really encouraging and we look forward to seeing this have a real impact going into 2022 and beyond.”

Each officer involved in the scheme has responsibility for a handful of shops which they manage alongside their other duties, ensuring meaningful interactions and highlighting the police presence in the town centre.

Operations manager for Grosvenor Shopping Northampton, Tom Litchfield, added: “This is a great initiative and we are looking forward to working closely with the police in the future. We have had an incredibly productive monthly meeting and will be sharing a monthly flash report outlining the crime statistics relating to the centre and our occupiers.”

For more information visit www.discovernorthampton.co.uk