How the 3Q’s Drive Incident Reporting to Prevent and Disrupt Crime and Violence

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At the end of 2024, Parliament’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee wrote an open letter to Dame Diana Johnson MP, Minister of State for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention after its inquiry into shop theft revealed seventeen million annual incidents with few leading to an arrest, and all at a cost to the retail sector of almost £2 billion in the last year. The letter said: “The Committee finds that shop theft is an under-reported crime that is not being effectively tackled, leading to a devastating impact on the retail sector and the wider economy.”

But it’s not just the under-reporting, but both the ‘quality and quantity’ reporting that will make the difference, according to Zinc Systems (Zinc), an incident and case management software provider working with some of the biggest names in retail, including B&Q and NEXT. “It’s often quoted, ‘quality over quantity’. In our case, we need both and quickly, ” said Steve Shackell, Zinc’s director of risk.

Quality

“In respect of quality, it comes down to a number of factors in tackling retail crime, whether through working with the police, issuing civil recovery, or banning orders to repeat offenders,” he said. “The police need high-quality evidence packages, including images of offenders from CCTV or body camera footage. Without these, it’s difficult to take up criminal investigations on our behalf.”

Jo Bloomfield from Zinc, who heads the B&Q Crime Centre, added: “The effect of poor-quality reporting, which generally is in the form of missing information from incidents, creates a delay in response. In essence, crime centre / SOC / LP staff spend valuable time following up with the reporters to get the information. Best practice is for the reporter to provide accurate information at the first opportunity. “

Quantity

“In terms of quantity, it’s essential to build a thorough picture of risk across an estate,” said Jo. “From a macro level, this helps us to advise retailers which stores have the highest overall crime challenges in order to support resource decision making. At a micro store level, detailed incident reporting supports
assessment of crime trends, including where and when crime takes place, what products are most impacted and who is offending.”

Quick Reporting

“All advancements in our strategy and the technology used are focused on giving back the ‘gift of time’ to all users, from shop floor to investigators to analysts,” said Jo. Improvements in technology, such as body-worn camera footage, face-matching and exploring the potential for AI in terms of data analysis, has also moved the dial, and retailers are looking for a connected solution to eliminate manual processes, streamline incident management and join investigation dots together.”

“As an example, we have integrated Zinc with HALOS Body Cams to automatically transfer footage attached to incident reports to eliminate delays in response and significantly reduce the time taken for evidence gathering. The solution saves on average 24 minutes per hour, which is a 40 per cent efficiency increase,” said Steve. “In terms of AI, we aim to reduce laborious data analysis by providing generative AI summarisation, a powerful AI Assistant to provide forecasting and recommendations, and Agentic tools to perform tasks autonomously, such as incident triage to minimise human intervention.”

Engagement is at the Heart of the 3Q’s

Getting retailers to understand the importance of quality, quantity, and quick reporting is a ’cause célèbre’ for Zinc. “Utilising new features in the Zinc platform, we have increased the efficiency of incident reporting, reducing time to report to 2-4 mins. Combined with this, we introduced a quality control strategy that improved the quality of reporting to a 95 per cent pass rate. The success of this strategy has been heavily influenced by an engagement programme which utilises focus groups, webinars, and is driven by a dedicated engagement officer, educating and motivating users to report,” said Jo.

“As part of the strategy, we conducted a ‘hackathon’-style competition workshop with our retail clients and the University of Northampton and their criminal law students to explore ways to increase awareness and the importance of reporting incidents. It focused on how retailers can create an environment that encourages staff to confidently report incidents of theft, violence and verbal abuse, ensuring their safety and well-being while addressing barriers such as fear of retaliation, lack of trust in management, or
uncertainty about reporting procedures,” she added. “The results delivered ideas around engagement, process and technological innovations, many of which are being explored by Zinc and our clients.”

Zinc’s ROI Stats in Just Twelve Months

• 99 per cent estate-wide incident reporting
• 95 per cent quality control pass rate for incident reports
• 77 per cent qualified reports for police action
• 22 per cent reduction in OCG Incidents
• 73 percent increase in offender sentencing
• 21 per cent of prolific offenders submitted to Opal were positively identified
• 30 per cent decrease in the actual loss associated with OCG’s
• 40 per cent saved time in incident triage with body cam integration
• 3 times return when utilising AI

Zinc is here to enable a smarter and safer future—reliably, powerfully, and intelligently.
To find out more about Zinc and our Evidence & Investigations software, click here.

Article written for LP Magazine Europe – Summer 25

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