Penny Keza was about to pay for her shopping at her local Aldi when a security guard bellowed across a crowd of customers and demanded to search her bag. “I asked why he had picked on me and his response was ‘People like you have been caught with stolen meat and alcohol’. He was unable to explain whether ‘people like you’ meant women or black people. Apart from him I was the only black person in the store.”

Keza, who works for Citizens Advice and shops regularly at the store in the London Borough of Hounslow, had her bags searched and her body patted down by the guard who found nothing compromising. She complained to the store manager and was told that random spot checks are part of store policy. “I accept that stores have to check for shoplifting, but the guy’s words were discriminatory and humiliating and the manager dismissive – and neither of them apologised.”

Aldi has since said sorry and admitted that Keza was mistreated. However, the incident, reported in The Observer, has prompted a volume of responses from shoppers who claim they have been unjustly singled out and humiliated by store security staff.

Spot check in public by Aldi security guard was dehumanising Read more

High street stores lost £438m to shoplifters last year, according to the British Retail Consortium. However, while the cost of crime has risen more than threefold since 2008, spending on security dropped in 2016 as stores pared down budgets. With falling police numbers and an increase in organised crime, it’s estimated that two fifths of thefts go undetected, and store staff are under pressure to safeguard stock.

One reader, who asked not to be identified, reckons budget cuts caused him to be unfairly targeted in a Derbyshire branch of Aldi. “I believe it is keeping its prices down in part by cutting back on the cost of security.

“Instead of employing store detectives, I suspect they are using a profiling system to carry out random searches,” he says. “I am a white, middle-class male, but I look scruffy because I cycle everywhere in old jeans, anorak and trainers. I was stopped by an assistant manager as I was leaving the store. He told me that I looked suspicious because I was holding a backpack and added that there had been a large increase in shoplifting from Aldi stores and that I should not mind being searched to stop this problem.”

Aldi says it has “robust security measures in place, including CCTV across all of our stores, to deter potential shoplifters”.

Retailers are within their rights to stop and question customers they suspect are stealing, but they should have proper grounds for doing so. According to a security industry insider, some firms covertly encourage staff to confront shoppers in order to meet weekly targets. Paul Davis (not his real name) spent four years working as a supermarket security guard in Essex and says that as crime increased and budgets fell, staff were ordered to change tactics.

“At first we were told to deter and prevent, shadowing suspicious-looking people or politely asking if they needed help. We were only to stop people if we were certain that an offence had been committed, and then we should invite them to a private area, normally the managers office,” he says.

“Later, we were told to take a more public, confrontational approach as it was felt it would deter other shoplifters if they saw people being challenged. Each Friday we would get a call from our area managers asking how much we have stopped from being stolen that week. If it was under £130 we’d be in trouble because the store wanted us to recoup 30% of its security spending. We all felt massively uncomfortable with this new approach, but our jobs were at stake so we’d just try our luck with people who looked a certain way or had unusual shopping habits.”

Racial profiling was officially banned, but, according to Davis, that edict was routinely ignored. “When somebody we perceived to be an Eastern European came into the store we would follow them and have a high success rate of capturing them stealing,” he says. “If you stopped a white, middle-class lady and it turned out she was innocent, you could be in serious trouble; if you stopped an eastern European male and he was innocent, the assumption of the management was that the only reason he hadn’t stolen this time is because we were on to him.”

Individuals working in the private security industry have to be qualified and licensed by the regulator, the Security Industry Authority, which has powers to disqualify any who fall foul of its licence standards. The trade body, the British Security Industry Association, requires its members to subscribe to a code of practice which includes protocols for searching customers, but, it says, many retailers directly employ personnel rather than outsourcing to a professional private security company.

Our jobs were at stake, so we’d try our luck with people who looked a certain way or had unusual habits Paul Davis, security guard

“Such ‘in-house’ employees are not required to carry SIA licenses and, as such, are not necessarily subject to the same level of mandatory training as their licensed private security counterparts,” says chief executive James Kelly. “The BSIA has long campaigned for the government to include in-house personnel, and hopes that action will be taken as part of the forthcoming revision of the current regulatory regime which was promised to our industry in 2010.”

Respect and discretion are core requirements of the BSIA code and staff are advised to invite customers away from the public gaze and to avoid physical contact. However, it is voluntary and applies only to BSIA members. Davis claims that staff on his team were encouraged to make a citizen’s arrest without any training in restraint methods. “They gave us a booklet containing the legal stuff we had to say before detained someone,” he says.

Low pay, long shifts and zero-hours contracts sap the morale of security workers and undermine the best-intentioned codes of practice, according to Davis. “Quite often they’d phone me on a Friday night and ask you to come into work the next morning,” he says. “If you refused you were told you’d lose your job.” He left when he was told that he would be transferred to a store 35 miles away as a punishment for ringing in sick.

GMB, the union that represents private security staff, has accused the industry of “wholesale exploitation” of workers through zero-hours contracts. It’s spent two years lobbying security firms and the companies that employ them to change the terms of contracts to give workers more security. “Things have to improve among the big providers,” it says. “But there is still insecure employment in the medium and smaller firms. In some cases people are being asked to work 60 or 70 hours a week to cover shifts.”

The Security Industry Authority says that targets for security staff and ongoing training are an internal issue between stores and security firms and each retailer has its own policies.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Security guards have no more legal powers than any other member of the public. They have to obtain your consent before they search you, and if you do not give it you are free to walk away. They can only forcibly detain you if they make a citizen’s arrest, and for that they have to have evidence you committed an offence. Given that they could be sued for assault or false imprisonment if they make a wrong call, this is unlikely unless you are caught in the act. If a guard suspects you have not paid for goods they should ask to see a receipt. It’s a reasonable request provided it’s made politely and discreetly. If you agree to a bag search it should be done in private, although the British Security Industry Association suggests that there may be a case for doing it in the presence of independent witnesses in case either side complains of mistreatment. It should also be you who unpacks the bag. If you consent to a body pat, it has to be done by someone of the same sex with a third party present.

A shop can legally ban you from the premises without evidence of a crime since private firms can choose who they do business with. However, if you suspect you are being targeted because of race or background, complain to the store and seek counsel from the Equality Advisory and Support Service or Citizens Advice.