The safety and security of our Partners and customers couldn’t be more important to us, and we have policies in place to protect both.
We’ve had incidents where our Partners have been hospitalised when challenging shoplifters. Luckily, they have always recovered, but that might not always be the case.
There is a serious danger to life in tackling shoplifters. We refuse to put anyone’s life at risk and that's why we have policies in place that are very clearly understood and must be strictly followed.
We hope you understand that as a responsible employer, we never want to be in a position where we are notifying families of a tragedy because someone tried to stop a theft. Nothing we sell is worth risking lives for.
While we recognise the strong reaction from media reports, we must say that the reporting on this does not cover the full facts of the situation.
While we would never be able to discuss an individual case, we can assure you the correct process is being followed in this instance and we will follow our standard appeals procedure.
We have campaigned for some time for more to be done to protect shop workers from offenders, including assaults against retail workers being made into a specific stand alone offence.
