Man arrested after attempting to steal alcohol from Waitrose in Stamford

A 40 year-old man has been arrested after he was allegedly caught trying to steal £500 worth of alcohol from Waitrose in Stamford on Tuesday (January 29).

Community Policing Inspector for Stamford, Inspector Ian Martin, said Ben Lavelle from Granville Avenue in Oadby, Leicester was due to appear in court today (January 30) facing five charges of shoplifting and one charge of assault.

The charges relate to yesterday's incident, two earlier this month and a further two in December.

Inspector Martin said Lavelle had been arrested by in-store detectives.

"Waitrose has suffered a few incidents recently and working with them, we suggested they place in-store detectives in the shop," he said.

"We received a call on Tuesday after a person was detained by these in-store detectives.

"He put up a fight, was verbally abusive and was kicking, screaming, spitting, swearing and tried to escape."

Inspector Martin said Lavelle had been taken into custody and was due to appear in the Lincoln Magistrates Court.

"In addition to yesterday, he's also linked to four other offences in the store on 28 and 30 December and 15 and 21 January.

"He has been charged with assault and the theft of alcohol totalling £2,300 from the five shoplifting offences."

Inspector Martin said that based on his address, Lavelle had travelled "some distance" to commit the alleged offences.

"Waitrose has been targeted along with a couple of other shops," he said.

"Stamford is on the border with other counties and is one of the towns that criminals come to steal outside of the area where they live.

"They believe that crossing county borders will make it more difficult for them to be identified by the different police forces.

"But we work closely with other forces and have really good intelligence links.

"They (the criminals) think Stamford is a soft target, which it isn't as we have proved with a number of arrests in the past year."

A Waitrose store manger said: "The police responded really quickly to the incident and we'd like to thank them for their assistance."