Enfield police to increase presence to deter shoplifters during holiday season

It's that time of year! Thousands of shoppers from Connecticut and Massachusetts will be heading to Enfield’s big box stores to get presents for the holiday season.

But in doing so, you might see more of a police presence.

Enfield police say shoplifting is a year-round problem, but it increases every holiday season due to the number of shoppers who come by.

They're upping their efforts to reduce shoplifting by doing more focused operations to catch people.

"Busy. Very busy. Crazy around here,” Heather Merrill said of Enfield's shopping district this time of year.

"I try to shop really early in the morning, really late at night,” Kate Garrity said.

Shoppers flock to the stores to get special gifts and the best deals, but Enfield police say not everyone goes in ready to pay.

"I could not quantify how many shoplifting calls we have. It feels like we get 100 in a week,” said Sergeant Steven Austin of Enfield police.

Earlier in the week, Austin and other Enfield Community Police Officers spent the day working with stores like Kohl’s and Target, looking for shoplifters.

Austin says they chose a random day and ended up catching -- and arresting -- five people.

“We're on scene with the loss prevention officer so we're watching it ourselves on surveillance and able to apprehend the suspects right then and there,” said Austin.

Police say that of those arrested, one woman had $4,000 worth of stolen goods alone. The others stole a couple hundred dollars worth of goods.

Austin says this is the first year the community policing unit is doing focused operations against shoplifting, hoping to deter people from even trying.

We don't want to say when and where - but we look forward to working with loss prevention again,” said Austin.

There are consequences for shoplifting in Connecticut,  such as thousands of dollars worth of fines and the potential for prison depending on how much money the stolen items are worth.