Police Urge Yorkshire Coast Businesses to Embrace Digital Crime System

Police officers in North Yorkshire are urging retailers to join more than 200 local companies in the fight against business crime.

As part of Safer Business Action Week, North Yorkshire Police is promoting a new system that helps secure crucial evidence quickly and efficiently.

Officers have been visiting local retailers and other businesses to understand more about the issues they are facing on a daily basis.

The force will be focussing on extra patrols, the targeted intervention of prolific offenders, and a range of crime prevention activity supported by the National Business Crime Centre.

Safer Business Action Week is a national campaign which mirrors similar operations held in the North Yorkshire Police area in October last year and March this year.

Activity in towns and cities throughout our area includes: proactive visits to shops, supermarkets and out-of-town retail centres; drop-in sessions encouraging members of the public to sign up to North Yorkshire Community Messaging; and extra high-visibility patrols in busy shopping areas to deter criminals and provide reassurance.

Officers will also be actively promoting North Yorkshire Police’s new digital evidence management system. Since its launch in July of this year, more than 460 accounts have signed up to the force’s NICE Investigate portal – of which 220 are local businesses. On top of that, many large national companies are also already members.

In total, they have used the system to submit almost 5,000 items of CCTV and other digital evidence. Were it not for NICE Investigate, that evidence would have had to be collected by another means – such as making an appointment to collect a USB stick or DVD.

Registering with the system allows users to upload security camera footage through a web portal. It doesn’t give the police access to any cameras directly, but it does mean evidence can be sent to investigators extremely quickly, and at a convenient time for the operator.

In many cases, officers may themselves recognise someone pictured on the CCTV. Otherwise, police can share CCTV stills via social media to see if the wider public knows who they are. Since July 2024, North Yorkshire Police has circulated 135 such images via its website, Facebook and X – dozens of whom were identified.

Chief Inspector Ryan Chapman said:

“We understand the significant impact of crimes against retailers and other businesses across York and North Yorkshire. Our Neighbourhood Policing Teams work in very close partnership with businesses all year round, but Safer Business Action Week is an opportunity to focus on the resources we put in to protecting staff, and deterring and disrupting persistent offenders.

“We also want to highlight our investment in new technology, which is already making our investigations more efficient. Criminals will soon get the message that their image can be sent directly to the police with the click of the button, giving us every opportunity to bring them to justice promptly.”

Superintendent Patrick Holdaway of the National Business Crime Centre, added:

“Last year’s week of action saw some fantastic results in targeting those who cause the most harm to businesses and also in building ongoing relationships between business, partners and the police.

“This is a great opportunity to shine a light on some of the current issues businesses face and also to highlight the ongoing work that police and partners are doing, supported by the NBCC, to tackle the problems that matter to local retailers and other businesses.”

Find out more about North Yorkshire Police’s new digital evidence management system at www.northyorkshire.police.uk/digitalevidence