Earlier this week, award winning retailer Amit Puntambekar held his breath and pressed ‘post’ on a lengthy comment about crime in his local community.
The story read like the plot of a horror movie. In January, in the small village of Fenstanton, near Cambridge, a known drug user was accused of shoplifting. After his family were barred from the store, his mother came looking for Amit – armed with a hammer and muttering “I’ll kill him”.
Fortunately, Amit was out.
But the woman took to the streets of the village in search of him. Amit took up the story in his emotional post: “For the next two weeks I had to warn my parents to hide their car and be careful when walking. This woman smashed the windows of her neighbours’ cars and property, but when asked why they didn’t report her, the response was, ‘We’re too scared and don’t want trouble.’”
I don’t know any other industry - outside of the police, armed services and some NHS staff - that sees so much violence.”
The shocking course of events set Amit thinking. Certainly much of that was worry, even fear - but he also wanted to address the wider issue facing retail today. Speaking exclusively to Convenience Store, he said: “I don’t know any other industry - outside of the police, armed services and some NHS staff - that sees so much violence. That’s something we need to be speaking about. Could you imagine having to tiptoe around an office or be so fearful about going upstairs that someone might attack you with a weapon?”
A sobering thought for anyone, but perhaps not a surprising one for those in retail. Amit’s need to speak out was inspired in part by other retailers. “In the last few months I’ve seen Vince Malone has started to be more proactive in speaking about the issues his family were facing and I saw Susan Connolly talking about the things she’s having to do to prevent theft - she’s also trying to highlight the issues…”
Amit says he found a new confidence – firstly to post about what had occurred in his area, but moving forwards, to try to speak more freely about the issues facing his industry. “Enough is enough. I don’t think the general public or even those in the industry realise the scale of violence that’s now facing retail on a day-to-day basis. I can’t be looking over my shoulder 24/7. I know a lot of the gangs are using electric scooters. You’ve had children under 18 years old arrested carrying knives and doing drugs in the village.”
”I don’t think the general public or even those in the industry realise the scale of violence that’s now facing retail…”
As a result, Amit took the decision to move away from the village some time ago, commuting 15 miles from Cambridge each day. But it was the hammer incident – which he was initially reluctant to talk publicly about, that set his mind to the task of spreading the word on how bad things have become.
“These aren’t issues that my parents had when they ran the store, well - maybe one or two issues in 20 or 25 years. We’ve seen a generational change. Some of the kids are being influenced by the wrong people. In the last two or three years, we’ve seen anti-social behaviour increasing. My belief is it’s a few bad eggs who are sowing seeds. One of them has now been arrested for drug dealing and carrying a knife… he’s only 17.”
In addition, Amit says he thinks his store will now only be able to donate a around a third of the £10,000 it gave to good causes last year. “So the cost of the theft and criminality has a huge impact on our village as a whole.”
But Amit hopes a unified, industry-wide voice that’s open and honest could help the industry. “I’ve spoken to quite a few retailers in the past few days and I’m trying to tell them we know crime is an issue. But on the whole, I don’t think the media - the national media - and the politicians, really care.”
“We need to talk about what our businesses do in our communities and then about the impact that crime has on our ability to support those communities.”
He also believes that the work stores like his do for communities might be a way of focusing attention on the challenges they face. “We need to talk about the work we do. Whether that be supporting children with disabilities or creating funds for education in primary schools. We even support knitting groups for pensioners – so we need to talk about what our businesses do in our communities and then about the impact that crime has on our ability to support those communities.
“Every retailer has these problems, or knows a friend who’s had something like this. So why don’t we talk about it? We’ve got all the connections. Why do we need to wait for somebody to be seriously hurt? We should be talking about this now. Hopefully with the crime bill coming up, we can raise some attention with the national media. But we need to start speaking about these issues. And we need to lead it from the community angle.”
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