Few stories have made me so angry recently as the case of Walker Smith.

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A long-standing employee of Waitrose, the 54-year-old has been sacked for confronting a shoplifter who was attempting to steal a bag of Easter eggs, leading to a brief struggle before the thief fled. Mr Smith, who says he regrets his actions, said he’d been spurred to intervene by watching thefts at the store “every hour of every day for the last five years” and not being allowed to do anything. He is not alone in his frustration.

According to the Office for National Statistics, shoplifting is now at the highest level since records began, with 530,643 reported offences in the year to March 2025. The true figure is almost certainly much higher, given that many shopkeepers have seemingly decided there’s no point in notifying the police. On my LBC show on Saturday, I received a call from Ramjit, who runs a shop in New Cross in south-east London. He told me shoplifting happens every single day, with the culprits becoming increasingly brazen.

There is sometimes a........

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