More action promised after police attend fewer than one in four shoplifting incidents
The policing minister has said she wants forces “to do far more” to tackle shoplifting after figures obtained by Sky News showed fewer than one in four incidents were attended to by officers in 2023.
Dame Diana Johnson blamed declining officer numbers under the previous government but also said she wanted to “see shop theft treated seriously…and the police need to play their part”.
She was reacting to figures obtained by Sky News under the Freedom of Information Act that reveal officers turning up to fewer and fewer incidents over the last decade.
Just 22% of shoplifting incidents were attended to immediately by police in 2023, based on responses from 22 of England’s 39 police forces.
In 2016, data from 17 forces gave an attendance rate of 52% – more than twice the 2023 figure.
While in 2013, figures from 11 forces suggested an attendance rate of 72% – more than three times higher than a decade later.
Looking at just the 2013 and 2016 data sets, a clear trend of declining attendance rates is seen.
Some of the police forces who responded to our request said this was because of modern more remote investigation techniques.
Others said that while officers may not always attend crime scenes immediately, they will often follow up at a later date if there are credible lines of enquiry.
However, store owners and workers have complained that a lack of police attention towards retail crime has created an atmosphere where criminals believe they can steal with few repercussions.
Earlier this year the British Retail Consortium said violence and abuse against retail workers had risen substantially to 1,300 per day in 2022/23.
Sky News has seen CCTV showing one shop worker in south London being threatened by three people on Christmas Day 2023.
The thieves steal scratch cards and spirits and attempt to assault a cashier, who fights back with what appears to be a spanner.
Another London store owner said he used to keep a baseball bat and pepper spray behind his counter, but was told to remove them by police.
“We can’t stop them, hold them or anything… shopkeepers are so vulnerable at the moment,” said Dennis Mariyaesan.
He also accused the police of not attending shop theft incidents and not taking the crime seriously enough.
Commander Owain Richards from the Metropolitan Police said: “Our call handlers will assess each and every report and make an assessment based on available lines of enquiry.”
Read more:
Police arrest 93 gang members behind £4m thefts in shoplifting crackdown
Workers say shoplifting is ‘out of control’ after surge in brazen thefts
A retail crime action plan was published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) last year prioritising attendance to incidents where violence was involved or where an offender had been detained.
However, levels of shop theft have increased dramatically in recent years leading to pressure on police resources.
A spokesperson for the NPCC said: “We have made significant strides in our fight against retail crime, strengthening relationships with retailers and greatly improving information sharing which has resulted in a number of high harm offenders being brought to justice.”
Dame Diana told Sky News: “We know over the last year there’s been a 29% increase… in shop theft. That cannot go on, we need to take action and the police need to play their part.”
She also pointed to declines in officer numbers as a possible reason for the drop in attendance rates.
The police headcount fell by around 20,000 between 2010 and 2017 before rising again by 25,000 by 2023 amid a recruitment push launched under Boris Johnson.
The Labour government has pledged an additional 13,000 additional neighbourhood officers by 2029.
Sir Keir Starmer has also promised a “named, contactable police officer” in every neighbourhood and an axing of the 2014 law that means “low value” thefts of under £200 are subject to less serious punishments.
Update (April 3, 5:43 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information on the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act.
The US House Financial Services Committee has passed a Republican-backed stablecoin framework bill, which will now head to the House floor for a full vote.
The Committee passed the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, with a 32-17 vote on April 2, with six Democrats voting in favor.
The bill was introduced on Feb. 6 by committee Chair French Hill and the chair of its Digital Assets Subcommittee, Bryan Steil — reportedly drafted with the help of the world’s largest stablecoin issue, Tether.
Source: Financial Services GOP
The bill would provide rules around payment stablecoins, a crypto token tied to a currency such as the US dollar, and aims to ensure issuers give information about their business and how they back their tokens.
During an earlier markup session, the committee’s leading Democrat, Maxine Waters, who later voted against the bill, criticized her Republican peers for “setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent” with the STABLE Act.
She said President Donald Trump could use the bill to allow his family’s stablecoin to be used in government payments, and argued the bill validates Trump “and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
In late March, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture launched a stablecoin, World Liberty Financial USD (USD1). Meanwhile, the US Housing Department, which oversees social housing, was reportedly looking to experiment with using stablecoins for some of its functions.
Stablecoin GENIUS Act also weaves through Congress
Other stablecoin-related bills are also working their way through Congress, including the Republican-led Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, which lays out oversight and reserve rules for issuers.
Related: Crypto has a regulatory capture problem in Washington — or does it?
The US Senate Banking Committee voted through the GENIUS Act in an 18-6 vote on March 13, after Senator Bill Hagerty, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, updated it following consultation with the Committee’s Democrats.
Before the vote, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said the updated GENIUS Act made “significant improvements to a number of important provisions” in areas such as consumer protections and authorized stablecoin issuers.
Both the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act will now wait until debate time on the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, before they head for a floor vote.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported on X that two unnamed crypto lobbyists said there is likely to be “a coordinated push behind the scenes over the next few weeks to get the two bills to mirror each other, as there are still some differences between them.”
Doing so would “avoid having to set up a so-called conference committee which is formed so members from both chambers can negotiate to create a final version of the bill everyone agrees on,” she added.
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Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.
In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.
Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Electrocuted on their genitals and mouths sewn up: Inside Bangladesh’s ‘death squad’ jails
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
Source: Linda Lacewell
Related: New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pulls
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
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