I totally understand that retailers want an urgent meeting with the Police Minister.

This is over the revelation that police aren't bothering to investigate shoplifting below $500 bucks anymore.

They're clearly worried, because what's happened is there's been a revelation from a memo that was sent to police staff a couple of months ago, saying that from now on, across all districts, cops will no longer investigate theft and fraud below a certain value.

General theft - anything below $200, not investigating. Petrol drive-offs - anything below $150, not investigating. Shoplifting - anything below $500, not investigating. 

Fraud - as in paywave fraud, online fraud, scams, anything below $1000 and then all other fraud - anything below $500, cops aren't turning up.

And that is, by the way, regardless of whether you have lines of inquiry. So even if you know who nicked the stuff, even if you can tell them where the stuff is, they're not going to investigate.

Now, it's totally understandable for retailers to want an urgent meeting on this, because this has probably come as something of a shock.

But also, this is the reality, isn't it? There are not enough police to deal with all the crime in the country. We know that.

It's not really even a total surprise when you think about how many stories you've heard about people who go to the police, tell the police exactly where the bike is, where the police can go and find it because it's been nicked, and the police won't go and get it.

But, this is gonna be a problem, isn't it?

When the thieves start finding out about this stuff - cause they may be criminals, but they're not always stupid - they know what they can get away with scot-free.

And that is why so many of them just ended up brazenly pushing those loaded trolleys out of the supermarkets for a while there, cause they knew nothing was gonna happen to them. I suspect the same thing is gonna happen once they figure out what the thresholds are here.

And if this is the reality that we now live in, then I think the only solution to this is for the Government to get out of the way of retailers helping themselves. 

They need to let the supermarkets use that facial recognition technology they want to use, so they can stop people from coming in and committing the crime.

They need to pass the citizen's arrests law to allow the retailers and the security guards themselves to stop the criminals getting away with this stuff.

Because frankly, if the cops can't help - and clearly there aren't enough of them to help - then the retailers need the tools to be able to help themselves.