The incident happened at Picard’s Newdays Pharmacy in Reading yesterday (August 19) at 12:20pm.
Picard was talking to a patient at the counter while the shoplifter was facing the shelves and gathering up products.
“With one eye I’m looking at this guy because it looks suspicious and he’s not even looking at what he’s buying, he’s just putting them in his arms,” Picard told C+D.
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“I’m thinking ‘I’ve got to be ready here’ because this guy’s not buying these products. In hindsight, I should’ve gone to him and said, ‘Can I help?’ but it is what it is.
“I managed to catch up with him, grabbed him by the waist and he dropped some of the stock he had in his hand. I’m lucky he didn’t have a weapon and didn’t manage to hit me in the face when he tried to elbow me.
“I said, ‘You’re going to give these back now’. He threatened me, said he was going to kill me, was going to come after me. I said to him ‘you’re the one stealing from my shop. I’m calling the police’. I dialled 999 and he ran with the stock.”
Police response
Earlier this month, the NPA released new survey findings revealing “a surge in incidents of shoplifting” in pharmacies.
Chief executive Henry Gregg said due to their “accessible nature, pharmacy teams can often be more exposed to abuse and threats than their primary care colleagues”.
He added that “the police should do much more”.
In Picard’s incident, the police told him they would send “a crime prevention officer in the coming days”.
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“I told them someone saw the patient walk into a property literally next door to the pharmacy, so they know where the person went to and they still said, ‘we’re not going to come out’,” Picard said.
“The police are not prepared to do anything. They’re not interested in petty crime.
“This would never be acceptable in a GP surgery or hospital. If someone was to come and start stealing things, people wouldn’t accept this.”
NHS support
Picard said community pharmacies need to be “properly supported” to deal with the shoplifting rise.
“It’s disappointing that our customers think that it’s acceptable to just walk into any shop, put the things in their arms and walk out the door just because they think they can get away with it and that no one will tackle them.
“That’s why I took the decision to run after him, because I could have let him run out the door, but I don’t want him to come back tomorrow. He might think twice before coming back.
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“The NHS needs to make the noise that these are privately owned businesses that offer services for the NHS. You don’t want to lose them. You want them to be there for you in times of need.
“But if you keep nicking from pharmacies, and pharmacies go out of business because of stock losses on top of everything else, that’s not acceptable.”
Picard said he “expected to be burgled overnight” after the incident and added it wasn’t the first time this had happened in his pharmacies.
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He recalled incidents captured on CCTV when he’s spotted Lynx deodorants being stolen, and he replaced a cosmetics display with a consultation room as “by and large, cosmetics were being nicked rather than purchased”.
The NPA chair’s friends told him he shouldn’t have gone after the shoplifter, but he argued “I’ve got a duty of care to my staff and patients” and has “got to show them we’re not there to take the abuse”.
“It’s not right. A pharmacy should be a welcoming environment. It shouldn’t be an environment that causes security issues, or has members of the team feeling insecure.
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“It breaks my heart every time it happens. I’m disappointed with the whole thing really.”
In June, a man who confessed to murder in a pharmacy was sentenced to decades in prison for a “truly horrific attack on a vulnerable woman”.
