Police Scotland unit reveals successes in targeting crooks across Scotland
THE Police Scotland Retail Crime Taskforce (RCTF) has highlighted to retailers how it used some of its £3million Scottish Government funding to tackle crooks at a local level.
Money was made available to all 13 local divisions for a series of initiatives to cut crime.
The east region, covering Forth Valley, Edinburgh, Lothian and Scottish Borders, and Fife divisions funded 30 bids totalling more than £360,000. This paid for additional enforcement/patrols, small independent retailer alarms, shop radio schemes, days of action and retail crime reduction initiatives, extra CCTV and third sector initiatives helping people to improve their lives among other things.
Key performance indicators (KPI) showed this led to 157 arrests, 478 theft by shoplifting (TSL) charges, 157 retail worker offences charges, 223 intelligence reports and 241 retailer engagements.
The north region, made up of Tayside, North East, and Highlands and Islands divisions received over £170,000 for seven funding bids. This again supported activities including extra enforcement/patrols, days of action and retail crime reduction initiatives, as well as youth related anti-social behaviour and TSL initiatives.
KPI data revealed this resulted in 98 arrests, 307 TSL charges, 22 retail worker offences charges, 106 intelligence reports and 386 retailer engagements.
The west region covering Greater Glasgow, Renfrewshire & Inverclyde, Argyll & West Dumbartonshire, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Dumfries & Galloway divisions got in excess of £540,000 for 36 bids
The money was used for similar initiatives seen across the east of Scotland. KPI figures highlighted 315 arrests, 1,130 TSL charges, 98 retail worker offences charges, 561 intelligence reports and 1,691 retailer engagements.
The details were unveiled in the Summer 2026 Retailer Bulletin put out by the RCTF. Meanwhile, the RCTF will be holding its next quarterly small and independent retailer webinar via Microsoft Teams at 11am on 19 August.
Retailers are asked to email SCDRetailCrimeTaskForcePrevent@Scotland.police.uk to be added to the circulation list.
Inspector Emma Wright, tactical lead for the Retail Crime Taskforce, said: “The efforts of the unit and work carried out by local divisions has resulted in a significant number of detections of both shoplifting offences and offences against retail workers.
“We want to thank retailers for their continued support and engagement as we collaboratively tackle the issue of retail crime.
“We cannot and will not become complacent and we recognise that further work is needed to reduce the number of offences occurring across Scotland. We take these offences extremely seriously and through continued partnership working we strive to make our communities a hostile environment for retail crime offenders.”
