Community app to help put names to faces of Ollerton shoplifters

Neighbourhood policing officers have been out in the town visiting stores to get them to sign up to a new platform that aims to zero-in on thieves plaguing the high street.

An image gallery of shoplifters known to the police and a chat feed where businesses can log live updates of an ongoing theft are some of the functions of the Ollerton Shopwatch service.

Having access to this information will allow businesses to communicate with the police and each other and help put a face to a name of a suspect when it’s reported, so that officers can take action.

Following a recent rise in reports of shoplifting in the Ollerton area, a decision was made to make Ollerton Shopwatch free for local shops to access via the Schemelink app, thanks to funding provided by Newark & Sherwood Council.

A similar scheme has been in place in Newark town centre since the start of the year and has helped make a real difference to tackling shoplifting there, with the Ollerton neighbourhood policing team hoping these results can be replicated.

PC Dawn Adams said: “We have seen a rise in reports of shop thefts in Ollerton and we know that people are fed up of it, so that’s why it’s so important we do something about it.

“Most of these thefts are carried out by the same people, who are often known both to us and to those working in the shops, although they might not know their names, which obviously makes it harder for us to then link them to an offence.

“If they see someone enter the store and think, I recognise that face, they can then log on to the app in seconds, see if their picture is on the image gallery and put a face to a name, which can really help us and means we’re much more likely to be able to take action and put them before the courts.

“Having the chat feed for shops to add information on is brilliant too because in Ollerton, if someone gets turned away from one shop, they’ll just go to the next one along, so staff being active on the app and communicating with each other can really help stop these offenders.

“When we went around the shops to promote this and to get businesses to sign up, every shop we went to told us they were really pleased it was coming in, and it’s obviously fantastic that it’s free because of the council funding too.

"I think this will massively help.”

Businesses can only be added to Ollerton Shopwatch by the neighbourhood policing team, with officers set to continue approaching shops in the coming weeks to get more to sign up.

While the team are users on the app and can access the messages on there, shop thefts should still be reported in the conventional manner by calling 101, or 999 in an emergency.