Inside surge of violence at UK’s biggest Primark with women filmed in brawl and one shopper pushed down escalator | The Sun
FOR many it's a shopper's paradise – boasting 160k square feet of the latest trends, not to mention three cafes and even a beauty salon.
But the UK's largest Primark store has fallen victim to a rising tide of violence, involving both customers and staff.
Over the last two years, there have been 58 incidents at the chain's flagship store in Birmingham city centre, police figures have revealed.
In one chilling incident, a person was pushed down the escalators and then jumped upon.
While a member of staff at the Primark branch on the city’s High Street was said to have committed another assault which caused injury.
And shocking footage recently emerged which showed two women having a fist fight inside the Birmingham store.
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The brawl took place on Friday July 9 last year and has since been shared hundreds of times on social media.
Video footage showed the women punching each other before they collapsed to the floor and began wrestling.
There were even reports that one of the women defecated in the store during the unseemly fracas.
The number of recorded offences inside the store, which opened to great fanfare in April 2019, jumped from 18 in between 2021 and 2022 to 40 in the next financial year.
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In the most recent 12 months, they included 13 assaults with injury and one case defined as ‘race or religiously aggravated assault with injury’.
Five members of staff and seven members of the public were hurt.
In one instance last year, a store employee was said to be the offender in a case defined as ‘assault with injury’, the dataset shows.
The revelations around violence inside the Primark store have emerged against a background of rising violence toward retail workers.
The cost of living crisis has caused some shoppers to literally lash out at workers when they don't get the deal they want.
A survey conducted by the Retail Trust found that one in three workers are shouted at, spat on or threatened or hit every week.
Shoppers were said to be stressed by rising prices, empty shelves, and staff shortages.
Disclosing the information, West Midlands Police said that it had withheld some details to protect personal information and the integrity of investigations and proceedings.
A Primark spokesperson said to The Sun: “We take the safety of customers and colleagues in our stores very seriously.
"We employ expert third party security partners to deal with incidents in a safe and controlled way, so that our colleagues
feel safe at work and our customers can have a safe and enjoyable shopping experience.
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"Unfortunately, we have seen an increase in crime and antisocial behaviour, not just in Primark stores but across the retail industry.
"This is not something that we tolerate and we continue to engage with the police, local authorities and other agencies and
businesses to explore different ways of tackling this issue.”
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