TRADERS have set up a WhatsApp group to share information and photos of known offenders after a rise in shoplifting.

Police encouraged traders in Droitwich town centre to share the information via the messaging app.

Sergeant Sarah Kent, of Wychavon Safer Neighbourhood Team, said the scheme has proved “really effective.”

She said: “It helps to reassure the shops that they’re not on their own and they’re working together to try and deal with this. No shop is an island and the same offenders go from one shop to another.”

Sgt Kent said the shoplifting problem “reflects the drug use in the town” and claims the thieves sell on the stolen goods for next to nothing to buy heroin or crack cocaine.

She told a meeting of the town council last week: “We’re working with shops to try and deal with them in the longer term. A lot of it depends on who’s in prison at any one time and that’s really the only control.

“It’s quite labour intensive for shops to have CCTV and quite annoying for them to constantly have to follow people round.”

A supervisor at a Droitwich petrol station told the Worcester News the scheme had been running since June 1.

He said: “It’s come in useful, if there’s known thieves knocking about who might hit multiple stores. We are just keeping an eye out and letting everyone know.

“You’d just send something saying: ‘this guy’s about, he’s just tried to rob here’.”

He added shoplifting was “not too bad” at the station but the scheme was a useful precaution.

He said: “There are quite a few known reported offenders – police do what they can but often offenders might only go inside for a few weeks and then they’re back out and up to their old tricks.”

Sgt Kent said her team are looking at criminal behaviour orders (CBO) to ban known offenders from certain shops.

One offender subject to a CBO is Richard Howlett, who is also currently on remand in prison pending a crown court trial. He is accused of an arson attack at the town’s Spar shop.