Up to half of convenience stores and vape retailers in some areas of Britain are believed to have links with organised crime, Trading Standards revealed today. The Mail has the story.
Inspectors estimate that a third of American candy stores and one in four fast food takeaways in specific areas are suspected of being a front for criminal activity.
A hotspot map in the group’s Hidden In Plain Sight report found where organised crime on the high street is widespread and identified two “corridors of crime”.
One stretches from Liverpool on the west coast to Hull and Grimsby on the east coast; and the other covers south coast towns across Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex.
While hotspots are common in more populated areas, some can also be found in less obvious locations such as Great Yarmouth which may be linked to the tourist trade.
A survey found 97% of Trading Standards officers are aware of suspected organised crime groups (OCGs) operating out of shops on their local high streets.
In an “almost universal recognition”, 99% of officers told of an increase in the number of cash-intensive businesses opening on their local high streets since 2020.
And 72% of Trading Standards professionals reported facing intimidatory behaviour or having been threatened with violence in the course of their duties.
Testimony shared with BBC News found one female officer was threatened with rape, while another was forced to watch pornography and a third was “poked in the breast”.
A third officer told how a suspect in a shop shouted “I kill you, I kill you”, while others recounted finding weapons in shops such as axes, bats, blades and hammers.
There were also attacks to officers’ cars and property as trackers were put on their vehicles and they were apparently followed at work.
One officer said a Kurdish crime gang selling illegal cigarettes and nitrous oxide canisters across the UK threatened to kill her and burn her house down.
Trading Standards has published a map of high streets across the UK for so-called dodgy shops, along with the 10 towns and cities perceived by its officers to be hot spots for OCGs, with Birmingham, Liverpool and London filling the top three spots.
It said the budgets of Local Authority Trading Standards (LATS) services had been cut by up to 50% over the last decade, with staffing stripped to minimum levels.
Trading Standards warned that this – coupled with resource “challenges” for other key enforcement agencies including police – had coincided with the rapid spread of dodgy shops across the UK, as well as complex criminal networks that underpinned them.
Dodgy shops had a “profound impact” on the safety of the public and the viability of the legitimate businesses around them, while putting the health of consumers, including children, at risk.
These shops often brought with them associated criminality including anti-social behaviour, theft and violent crime, drug supply, modern slavery, and child sexual exploitation.
Worth reading in full.
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We have many such shops in our local towns, but I don’t expect the local authorities to do anything about it, they get no income from an empty shop. As long as the shops are paying their business rates etc they will be free to carry on prying their trade.
I don’t see customers in these shops as I pass and usually the ethnic shop keeper is standing in the doorway smoking goodness knows what.
As Wales is a ‘sanctuary country’ these shops operate freely as a show of a compassion and benevolence!
Then there is the Turkish Barbers. two alone in our nearest tiny country town they are never full, am ocassional punter, and regular visits from a man in a top of the range BMW
The council does nothing as I suspect they are more than happy to collect the rates and taxes, and the police across the country do nothing. these are obviously large money laundering organisations, and yet in lawless Britain. foreign crime is allowed to continue in order to support diversity, Anti racism, and those communities cohesion
Gosh, colour me surprised.
No-one could possibly have predicted that an explosion in immigrant-run cash-only Fast Food, Barbers, Nail Bars, Convenience Stores, Car Cleaning sites etc would be a front for criminal activities.
Just look at the businesses the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers advises its members not to work for: vape shops, car washers, nail bars, tanning salons, ‘Turkish’ barbers..
The authorities know all about these places, and they love them.
They pay their business rates and taxes on time and in full.
Ask no questions and hear no lies…
“It said the budgets of Local Authority Trading Standards (LATS) services had been cut by up to 50% over the last decade, with staffing stripped to minimum levels.” To have a functioning nation requires functioning law enforcement. Here’s another aspect of the facilitation of the crime boom, to go with the cuts made to the police and criminal justice system made by the 2010-15 government and the uncontrolled import of criminals.
I’m going to take an eccentric line here and suggest we look at the wider picture. Over the last five decades successive governments have outlawed, punitive taxed or restricted more and more of activities that people enjoy: vapes, cigarettes, smoking in public, driving, alcohol, drugs, dissenting from government policy, having arguments and sex. When a new culture develops and spots a niche market, with less respect for the indigenous culture of obeying endless rules and laws, the ruling class throw funds at policing the new laws, rather than reflect on why these laws still exist, other than to create jobs and permanently keep the populace scared, non-breeding and controllable.
Spot on, prohibition has never worked and just opens up new markets for criminals, indigenous and foreign. Just look at what happened in the US in the 1920s when alcohol was banned.
Upvoted, of course. But it’s even worse than you describe.
The government doesn’t care about enforcing existing laws. Except – for some reason – in pubs, where a job description for a barman might as well read “Full-time, alert enforcement agent for whatever rules the State might dream up next”, rather than simply “Serve customers, cellar work, chuck out people who are trouble or excessively drunk”.
Let’s take vapes, for example. It’s already long been illegal for U18s to buy vapes. Does any authority, anywhere, give a flying **** about enforcing this? No, of course not. Far better to let it turn into a Problem, then into a “Crisis”, then into a “Tsunami”, whip up a moral panic, and use it as an excuse to pass Tough New Laws, aimed at adults, which will in turn not make the blindest bit of difference to the purported “problem”.
Come October I’m going to be supporting my local illegal vape-suppliers, of course. That’s what happens when government is stupid.
“Half of All Convenience Stores and Vape Retailers “Are Linked to Criminal Gangs” in UK Hotspots”
Half you say?……….only half? Blind eye maybe?
Why are the police not interested. Why trading standards officers.
In many tiowns there are all sorts of shops that cannot possibly pay rent on the basis of turnover. There must be illegal activity to support them. Turkish barbers, high fashion retail outlets in places where high fashion is not sold locally, bars, all sorts of places. Residents I speak to make similar observations to me but the police only ever come to town in fast cars or walk through in threes smiling at anyone whose eye they can catch.
This is absolutely shocking! Who could have possibly believed that vape shops – that are perpetually devoid of customers – are a front for criminal gangs?? The next thing you’ll be telling me is that we don’t need a Turkish Barber for every two people in the population!!! I’m not having any of it!
I’m missing something – surely all these places have now been raided by armed officers, the crooks arrested and deported or hopefully shot.
Presumably.
Not allowed to do anything about it though, because that would be “racist” or something…
Diversity is our strength….
Cultural enrichment….
We have barbershops on our high street selling drugs out the back (Kurds). ‘I’d like a trim and a package of your good stuff please.’ Police shut them down, they simply move on to another location.
Bunch of good lads, burn the feckers out and hoist the george cross on the ashes.
I am fed up of this country being so visibly wet.
This is not the dam busters spirit FFS.
I am shocked! I can’t believe this! And that they’re not white British either?!
Say it ain’t so!
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