A viral video from a Tesco Express in London sums up the retail crime crisis in Britain. In the footage, a man is seen confronting a member of Tesco staff. The worker, wearing the blue Tesco uniform, tries to defend himself with a shopping basket. The other man shouts: “What’s police going to do bro? Don’t ever try to fucking threaten your police bro.” The reality behind the scene is that in the UK, shoplifting has effectively been decriminalised. Since 2014, under Section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, theft of goods under £200 was treated as a low-level, summary offence. In theory it was still a crime, but in practice police stopped attending and retailers stopped reporting. The results have been catastrophic:
- Over 530,000 shoplifting offences recorded by police in the year to March 2025 – a 20-year high.
- According to the British Retail Consortium, the real number is over 5.4 million thefts a year.
- In London alone, shoplifting reports jumped 37% in just 5 months.
- Some prolific offenders were linked to dozens of thefts before spending a single day in jail.
Shop workers are now on the front line. Many, like the man in the Tesco Express video, are forced to defend the shop themselves. The government has finally admitted the law “created the perception that police would not respond to low-value theft” and has now passed the new Crime and Policing Act to scrap the £200 threshold. But as this video shows, the damage is already done. In modern Britain, a thief gets angry because you won’t let him steal in peace.
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