'Should I go and fight for my stock?' Preston phone shop owner says police blew chance to retrieve £16,000 of stolen kit
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Adnan Shafique’s Repair ‘n Go outlet on Fishergate was broken into in the early hours of 14th January, when thieves ransacked the premises and escaped with a range of handsets, laptops and accessories.
Just hours later, tracking software installed on the pilfered products - including Adnan’s own Macbook - told him that the devices were sitting in a property in the Ribbleton area of the city.
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Hide AdHowever, he says that the Lancashire force failed to act quickly enough to retrieve the items - leaving him seriously out of pocket and allowing the burglars to go unpunished.
Adnan told the Lancashire Post that he sent the tracking info to the officer assigned to deal with the case, but was unable to get a response - and so set off to the address himself. When he arrived, he phoned the police’s non-urgent 101 number and asked for help.
“They said if it’s an emergency, you can call 999 - but when I did, 999 actually [advised me] it wasn’t.
“I said to them, ‘[I’ve had] £16,000 of my life savings stolen and I know where it is - and that’s not an emergency?’ I found that really surprising.
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Hide Ad“I told them I was right next to the address and said, ‘So do you want me to take the law in my hands and go…and fight for my things?’
“They said, ‘No, no, no - don't do that, we’ll update the response unit.’ But I was there for an hour and nobody came,” Adnan recalls.
The following day, he was pinged again with a notification letting him know that his stolen stock - more than 30 individual items in total - had now been shifted to the other side of the Pennines and was being stored in Bradford. He got back in touch with Lancashire Police directly and again called the 101 line - but says that if any action was taken, it came too late.
“After that, I never actually got another ping. Every device that was stolen had an Apple ID on it, [so] maybe £16,000 worth of stock is not even worth £500 [to the thieves] - because everything was locked and got blacklisted after [it was stolen]. It was probably broken up for parts.
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Hide Ad“Two days [after the burglary], the case officer came in and said, ‘Sorry, I didn't see your messages.’
“A sergeant also gave me a call and said, 'I know it's frustrating for you, but we are really [understaffed] at the minute - and if we have to stop all shoplifting and burglaries, we’d have to create another force.
“I was furious at this comment - I pay council tax in this country and part of that goes to the police. I needed them and there was no-one to attend - that is really frustrating.”
After two months, Adnan says Lancashire Police told him that they were closing the case, because of a lack of evidence.
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Hide AdThe Post understands that tracking activations are not always entirely accurate and that several properties in an area may have to be visited before the correct one is identified. Officers would also have to obtain a warrant before they could enter the premises - irrespective of what any tracking data might be suggesting about where stolen items may be located.
At the time of the burglary, Adnan’s shop - which had only started trading a few weeks earlier - did not have shutters or CCTV, as he had been rushing to get the premises open to ensure he made the most of the rush in the run-up to Christmas.
He says that his suppliers and landlord both made allowances in the wake of the raid so that the incident did not sink his and his wife’s new venture.
However, Adnan - who has had another shop in Preston, on Market Place, for the last three years - says his experience reflects the reality of retail crime in Preston and the police response to it.
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Hide Ad“We have problems every second day - there is a situation just now where kids are trying to steal stuff, but there's no police around, no presence. If you give them a call for shoplifting, they don't even come.
“[As for the burglary], we never imagined that this could happen on a main high street. We ran a shop on Derby high street - it didn’t need shutters and didn’t have a single break in in four years.
“But it’s really bad in Preston - and the surprising thing is that [in spite of our location], they don’t have [many] CCTV cameras.
“My faith [in the police] is completely out now. As a taxpayer, if you need that service and then nobody is there for you, that’s scary.”
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Hide AdResponding to the issues raised by Adnan Shafique, a spokesperson for Lancashire Constabulary told the Post: “We were called around 7.45am on 14th January to a report of a burglary at a shop in the Fishergate Centre in Preston.
“We attended and took fingerprint, DNA and CCTV evidence but no suspects were identified.
“Anyone with information can contact police on 101, quoting log 0226 of 14th January.”
Preston City Council recently made a successful bid to the government’s Safer Streets Fund and will invest part of the £146,000 it will receive in expanding CCTV coverage in the city centre.