01 Nov 2024
There’s a new weapon in the fight against retail crime in St Albans city centre – an information-sharing app to improve safety and security for traders.
Known as Disc, the facility includes photo galleries of known offenders alongside instant messages and alerts on recent incidents, keeping shop and hospitality staff up-to-date on developments which might impact on them.
It is being championed locally by St Albans BID (Business Improvement District), and works in conjunction with the existing ShopSafe scheme, which provides a radio link to city CCTV for retailers to provide details about suspects.
BID manager Vivian Cannon said she wanted to find a platform which would have a real impact for their levy payers in terms of providing information and circulating knowledge to keep them safer.
“It’s about sharing. It might not be an incident you report to police, it might just be to let other retailers to watch out for these people.
“It doesn’t even have to be a shop. It could be a petrol station where someone has driven off without paying and you’ve got them on camera. It could be that someone’s just been really abusive, or they’ve done something that is really weird and you feel threatened.”
Once information has been added to Disc, it remains on there, allowing users to build up local intelligence on incidents and offenders, with all information strictly compliant with data sharing legislation.
Vivian is keen to see more retailers take part: “It was slow to start off with, but it’s started to grow. You can’t force people to sign up, and everyone runs their own business in the way they want, but I hope more people become aware of it.
“Sometimes you have to be personally impacted. There was one business where for the first time they had something stolen, they were quite shocked when it happened, and they immediately decided they wanted to be part of ShopSafe and Disc.
“But I don’t want businesses to wait. I want them to sign up and be aware straight away. We’ve got under 100 signed up at the moment, but I’d like a lot more considering the amount of shops and businesses we have in St Albans.”
Businesses keen to find out more about Disc and ShopSafe should contact Vivian in the BID office at 7 French Row.
