Extra Halloween security hired as shoplifting cases soar

A fancy dress shop owner says he is having to hire additional security guards in the run-up to Halloween because of soaring levels of shoplifting and antisocial behaviour.

Gary Wakefield, who runs Lili Bizarre fancy dress and balloon shop in Liverpool city centre, complained to the BBC that police were not doing enough to investigate and prosecute shoplifters, despite businesses providing them with evidence.

Ch Insp Chris Ruane of Merseyside Police said: "It's not good enough. The police are a public body and are accountable.

"If you are not happy with the service you are getting, whether that be a report, an incident or a crime report, flag it up and report it back in and we can review it."

The number of shoplifting incidents recorded by Merseyside Police has almost doubled since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, from 5,415 in 2020-21 to 10,419 in 2025-26.

Wakefield is taking action to protect his business.

He said: "We have at least two security guards on in the week leading up to Halloween. That's a cost we never used to have.

"We used to have maybe someone on the door to crowd control as it's busy but now it's for anti-social behaviour, for theft."

Wakefield, who runs his shop on Tarleton Street with his mother and sister, said one incident had particularly shocked him.

"Probably about 18 months ago, we had a father and son come in," he remembered. "A teenager [wearing his] school uniform."

Wakefield said the man had visited "the previous day and tried costumes on. The following day he came back with his son and [stole] it - it's awful.

"Bringing your 14-year-old child in as a decoy to shoplift - it's disgusting, but what was equally more [so] was the fact that the police didn't do anything about it."

He said they had recognised the teenager's uniform and that his school had identified him and reported him but "police did nothing about it".

Wakefield said he had only ever wanted to recover the value of the stolen goods.

Of Merseyside Police he said: "We never heard anything of it - what more can you do? We did the job for them."

Wakefield said such incidents were increasing, in large part because shoplifters do not feel there is enough of a deterrent.

Even when cases are reported to the police, all too often he feels there are little to no repercussions for them.

Wakefield complained: "There's no police presence here. Friday and Saturday, there's thousands of people in the city centre and yet there's no police.

"Sometimes they just pull up, leave the car, get out and that's the deterrent.

"We try and report crime whenever it happens - sometimes it can be difficult because it takes 25 minutes to record a crime sheet with Merseyside Police."

Ruane said his force had recently introduced new ways to digitally gather evidence, so officers have more hours to investigate other crimes.

He said this meant more incidents could be investigated.

Exclusive data gathered by the BBC shows that in the last financial year, Merseyside Police recorded a 10.9% annual increase in shoplifting cases - more than 1,000 additional incidents.

The Liverpool Business Improvement District, a non-for-profit organisation that liaises with the police on behalf of businesses, warned the true extent of shoplifting was even worse.

It estimated that only about 10% of shoplifting cases were even being reported to Merseyside Police.

Its operations director Shaun Holland said: "When we talk to [our members], they are really concerned about the level of shoplifting on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, in the city centre.

"Probably one in ten crimes get reported. That's normally because there's violence involved at the time, but there are some in the city that don't report any crime because it's about brand image and what damage that could do to them."

Holland said more needed to be done to deal with the issue because "people are moving from other levels of crime to shoplifting because the sanctions aren't there".