Crime happening inside Shoprite

Last Monday 02 September 2024 my wife went for shopping in that afternoon at Shoprite, letlhabile mall unaware that there are people who are pick pocketing the customers right inside the store where there are surveillances cameral on every row of the groceries shelfs. She told me as she was on the chocolate shelve, 2 guys approached from behind while still deciding which chocolate slabs to buy and requested her to pass them some chocolate slabs and pointing to the ones that were on a further higher shelve than the ones that she intended to pick.

She had her handbag hanged on her shoulder with the handbag zipped but as she was generously and innocently acting to the request of the 2 guys, she then had to try and reach to the much higher shelve to give/pass the chocolate slabs to these 2 guys, as she was reaching to the higher shelve her handbag was then exposed to these 2 guys whom 1 of them unzipped my wife's bag and snitched her cell phone out of her bag. She only noticed that at the cashiers till point. After she noticed that her cell phone was ******, she requested for assistance from the store management, and they went to review the camera at the surveillance room and indeed saw that the culprits were the 2 guys that she passed the chocolates to them from the higher shelve but they couldn't let her view the camera footage without being accompanied by the Police.

My wife and I went our local Police station to report and open a case, and we were advised to first go the Shoprite with Police to first view the camera footage and see if perhaps we could be able to identify the culprits, we were in company of 2 Police, a male and female Police officials. when we arrived at Shoprite, we were taken to one of the managers offices and we related our experience to her, and she called a store manager for us as she couldn't help us by herself. Upon arrival of the store manager, we related the accident to her, and she said that she needed to make a call first and request for a permission for the Police and my wife to review a footage from the surveillance room, when she come back, told us that only the Police are permitted to view the footage. That's fine, we were content with that, but I was asking myself why Shoprite surveillance couldn't pick up sometime as those ****s were snitching cell phone from my wife's bag? and what is more interesting was that the first manager that received us, attired that they are aware of this people who are pick pocketing customers inside the store and they also still groceries items from the store.

One will wonder why we have security personnel at Shoprite and what's supposed to be their role. We support Shoprite, they are making profits from our shopping as community, but we are vulnerable to become victims of crime that is happening right inside the store. I'm not sure if ever other Shoprite outlets elsewhere, are safe to making shopping, my advice is that whenever you go for shopping at Shoprite's, be alert please. My wife doesn't have a cell phone today, but Shoprite got their profits, and they don't care about safety of their customers while inside their store. Maybe they must display a disclaimer Infront of their store's doors reading, "Shopping at your own risk"