AFTER discovering one of his shop windows had been smashed for the fifth time, Crispin Johnson simply sat down and wept.
As he unlocked the front door of Johnson's Delicatessen in Edinburgh's Gorgie Road, he saw pools of olive oil on the floor.
Next he spotted the shattered glass of the window and in the same instant wondered if he should stop reporting the vanda
lism to his insurance company for fear that his premiums would go up.
According to new findings by the Retail Violence Survey, Mr Johnson is not alone. The poll, carried out by Independent Retail News, reveals that one in five British shopkeepers fell victim to violent crime in the past 12 months. Most believe the crime is fuelled by drink or drugs.
Mr Johnson, 36, of Armadale, yesterday told The Scotsman: "It was heartbreaking. It's hard enough to earn a living without footballs being kicked at your windows and airgun pellets fired at your chillers, as I have experienced in the past."
Half of all retailers questioned believe drugs are the root cause of retail crime – 42 per cent laying the blame on alcohol. Retailers are going to the police in growing numbers, according to the survey.
Eighty per cent of those questioned said they "always" reported crime and almost a quarter conceded the police were getting "much better" at tackling anti-social behaviour and violent crime.
Mr Johnson said: "I think drugs and alcohol were probably the catalyst for this happening to me. But I think the root causes lie much deeper in society and our culture as a whole. It is too easy to blame it on the cheapness and availability of alcohol."
Mr Johnson handed a petition to the City of Edinburgh Council in March 2003 after suffering five smashed windows, three broken windows and a fire in three years. CCTV cameras have now been installed in Gorgie Road after 32 out of 66 shops complained their business had been affected by crime.
Some of the examples cited by exasperated retailers include locks being filled with cement at a hairdressers and goods set on fire outside a charity shop.
Other premises have been vandalised after doors were forced and windows broken.
The survey results, published yesterday, come after two high-profile cases of attacks on Scottish shop staff by drug addicts.
A knife-wielding raider who carried out seven robberies on shops across Edinburgh in less than a fortnight was last month jailed for 12 years.
James Frail, a heroin addict, 28, from Edinburgh, robbed a tanning shop in Gorgie Road as well as a launderette, hairdressing salon, two Scotmid shops, and two bookmakers' premises elsewhere in the city.
Another heroin addict, John McGeechan, was jailed for 20 years last month for murdering Amjid Ismail, 34, in an Ayrshire shop. The knife attack left the popular shop assistant slumped over a till at the village store in Maybole that his family had run for 20 years.
Lothian and Borders police were not available yesterday to comment on any of the findings in the survey.
The full article contains 522 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
