Saturday March 7th 2026
Livingston's Centre. The town plans to mark the Queen's platinum Jubilee and its own 60th birthday by achieving city status.
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Stuart Sommerville
Shoplifting is on the increase in West Lothian but local police claimed success in tackling offenders in Livingston’s shopping centre.
The police officer behind an operation launched in the summer told councillors “there is always going to be an element” of the crime but officers were building intelligence on regular offenders.
Councillor Danny Logue chair of the East Calder and East Livingston Local Area Committee said culprits stick out “like a sore thumb”.
“Some of them stick out like a sore thumb where they wear sunglasses, a hat and a scarf, keeping the scarf high around the face. It is pretty obvious,” he told this month’s meeting
PC Robert Montagu in his report to the committee said: “West Lothian has experienced a significant increase in incidents of shoplifting across the division. In response, a targeted initiative—Operation Jackdaw—was developed in collaboration with local businesses.
Funding for this initiative was provided to West Lothian by the Retail Crime Task Force in June 2025. Since the allocation of funding, 821 reports of shoplifting have been recorded, of which 322 have been solved to date, representing a solvency rate of 39.2%.
The constable said: “A total of 133 individual offenders have been identified. Notably, 13 prolific offenders were responsible for 201 offences, accounting for 62.4% of all solved shoplifting crimes. In addition, 83 crimes against retail workers have been reported during this period.
“Of these, 55 have been solved, resulting in a solvency rate of 66.3%. Thirteen offenders were identified as being responsible for 22 of the solved offences, representing 40.0% of all solved crimes against retail workers.”
Councillor Veronica Smith asked what kind of goods were targeted. Expensive clothing and sports goods are among the most pilfered but groceries are also regularly stolen.
PC Montagu told the meeting: “There’s always going to be an element of shoplifting that goes on. We are trying to get as many deployments of officers as possible at the shopping centre and we are trying to build a bigger intelligence picture as to who the regular shoplifters are .
“I have a good relationship with the town centre management and security staff. We have close communication with them.”
Councillor Logue said he had witnessed thieves filling trolleys and walking out past security staff- telling them to “Get lost”, walking to their cars and loading up.
PC Montagu replied that officers also worked with a retail organisation on collecting information on shoplifters. He added: “We need to to be a bit more the ball. The teams are fast at getting in contact with us, and they do assist in taking registration plates .
“I appreciate it is very frustrating to see individuals being verbally abusive and just taking items and you feel powerless to stop them. It’s just about being in the right place at the right time.”
Tweet Share on Facebook
