Workers face brazen shoplifters and the wrath of ‘Kens and Karens’ as retail crime surges in Victoria
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Theft from retail stores rises 27.6% year-on-year as staff ‘screamed at, sworn at, spat on or shoved’ and even stabbed
Benita Kolovos Victorian state correspondentFri 26 Sep 2025 16.00 BSTShare
“Matthew” was minutes into his break on a night shift at his job in regional Victoria when a woman approached him and asked for a cigarette. He refused.
It wasn’t until he was walking back into the store that he realised she had allegedly stabbed him.
“I didn’t even know I was stabbed until the red stuff started coming out – and there was a lot of it.”
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The woman allegedly used a utility knife, causing a severe wound. Matthew was airlifted to a hospital in Melbourne, and underwent four operations.
The woman was later charged, with the matter now before the courts.
Speaking under a pseudonym to protect his identity, Matthew says violence has become more common at his work.
“People come in, they’re wielding machetes and we have to let them do what they want, walk out with a trolley of groceries or whatever.
“There’s nothing we can do.”
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, retail workers across Australia have faced a sharp uptick in abuse, violence and theft. But what began as occasional outbursts during lockdowns has grown into a crisis, with social media regularly flooded with footage of brazen daylight thefts.
According to a joint survey by the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) and National Retail Association, 70% of retailers reported an increase in theft in the 2024/25 financial year. Just over half (51%) said their staff had experienced physical abuse at least once a month, with verbal abuse even more common, affecting 87% of workers.
The state secretary of the Victorian Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), Michael Donovan, says women are most affected as they as make up most of the retail workforce. More than a third are aged between 15 and 24 – often in their first job.
“They’re being screamed at, sworn at, spat on or shoved, they’ve had things thrown at them, dragged across the counters – right through to being slashed or stabbed,” Donovan says.
Major retailers are also speaking out. This week, Myer reported a 79% increase in incidents of threatening behaviour over the financial year – including both verbal and physical abuse. Super Retail Group, which owns Rebel Sport, reported “increased risk of retail crime, theft, harassment and aggressive customers”, saying it was becoming more difficult to attract and retain staff, while supermarkets Coles, Woolworths and Ritchies IGA have also expressed concern about rising crime.
In Victoria, theft from retail stores in rose to 41,667 offences in 2024/25 – an increase of 9,004, or 27.6% on the previous year, data released by the Crime Statistics Agency on Thursday showed.
The data showed incidents of food theft had risen from 4,229 in 2015/16 to 7,635 in 2024/25 – an increase of 80.5%. Cigarette and liquor theft has also grown from 8,968 to 14,222 over the period – a 58.6% increase.
Who’s doing all the stealing?
Griffith University’s Prof Michael Townsley says retail theft has been “slowly creeping up” since 2010 – with the exception of the Covid-19 years.
The rise of self-service checkouts and reduced staff-to-customer ratios have made it “easier to commit” theft “so there’s more of it”, Townsley says. At the same time, retailers have installed “more systems to detect and prevent theft”, making the problem more apparent.
In his 2024 ANZ Retail Crime Study, Townsley found almost 2% of turnover was lost nationally in 2023/24, costing $7.79bn.
But he says it’s harder to pin down exactly who is responsible for most of the offending.
At the more sophisticated end is organised crime, including “loosely affiliated” groups targeting supermarkets, bottle shops and shopping centres for expensive items such as alcohol, cigarettes and meat – or conducting ram-raids on designer stores.
“They are stealing things on a routinised basis, giving it to a receiver or a ‘fence’ who then is getting rid of it,” Townlsey says.
Another rising trend is group theft by young people, in a method Townsley describes as “swarming”: targeting stores with only one staff member on duty, using distraction or intimidation to steal large quantities.
Then there’s the opportunists – including those exploiting self-checkout systems at major supermarkets. Townsley says many in this cohort find it “easy to rationalise” stealing from “big, faceless corporations”.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Ruth Liston, a lecturer in criminology at Victoria University.
“It’s part of our culture – people don’t love Coles and Woolies because they perceive they engage in price gouging and other poor practices,” Liston says.
She says a reduction in staff has also played a role.
“You might have 12 self-checkouts and only one person monitoring them. If someone steals something, that staff member is left to confront the offender alone,” Liston says.
She also noted many incidents involve people experiencing mental illness, substance dependence or severe financial stress.
Victoria police’s deputy commissioner for regional operations, Bob Hill, on Thursday said 50% of those involved in retail theft in 2024/25 were first-time offenders, indicating that cost-of-living pressures were playing a role.
‘Kens and Karens’ the ‘biggest problem’
Despite the rise in shoplifting, Townsley says many retailers report their “biggest problem” remains “Kens and Karens” – middle-aged men and women who lash out at staff if they’re “having a bad day or not getting the service they’re expecting”.
At Labor’s state conference in May 2024, the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, announced the government would introduce tougher penalties for people who assault, threaten or intimidate retail workers by the end of 2025.
She appointed upper house MP Michael Galea to oversee consultation. A former SDA organiser, he says he represented several assaulted workers over his 11 years at the union.
“There was young woman who had a bag full of heavy groceries thrown at her head, a worker was stabbed with a hypodermic needle – but thankfully tested negative – several where customers were extremely abusive to young staff and intimidating them,” he says.
But the Victorian SDA has criticised the pace of reforms, with Donovan saying the state is lagging “well behind” other states and territories, including on penalties.
Along with the ARA, the Victorian SDA is pushing for workplace protection orders (WPOs) to ban known offenders from re-entering stores – a measure already in place in the ACT, with similar plans under way in South Australia and Western Australia. But there are legal and ethical concerns – especially around the use of facial recognition technology to enforce them.
Galea refused to say whether WPOs would be included in the final legislation but hopes the consultation group will “consider further measures” at its next meeting. While the reforms are “on schedule”, he says he is “anxious for the laws to be introduced to parliament as soon as possible”.
As for Matthew, he says the government must act – before tragedy strikes.
“It’ll only be a matter of time until you have an incident at a store and the outcome is not so good,” he says.
2nd shoplifter in Jacksonville store owner’s death gets 10 months; the first got 10 years
Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
- The co-defendant in the shoplifting that caused an employee’s death got a substantially lighter sentence that his accomplice.
The second Jacksonville defendant arrested in the Dec. 6 shoplifting that led to a 64-year-old store owner getting run over and killed by the getaway driver ― who is still being sought ― got off much easier than the first.
David Frederick Pulliam Jr., 30, pleaded no contest on June 17 to charges of misdemeanor petty theft and resisting while committing theft, according to court records, and was immediately sentenced by Judge Brooke Brady to 10 months in jail for each count, but to run concurrently ― so 10 months total.
Co-defendant Tashina Renee Dobbins, 40, who described Pulliam as her fiancé, pleaded guilty to felony petty theft but skipped her sentencing and was re-arrested on an additional charge of failure of a defendant on bail to appear. On May 30, Judge Mark Borello sentenced her to five years in prison for each count, but to run consecutively ― meaning 10 years total.
After learning of Pulliam’s sentence, Beauty Max owner Ilson Miriam Kim‘s family provided the following statement:
“We are deeply disappointed by the outcome of the trial. It does not reflect the justice Ilson Kim deserves. Everyone responsible for her murder must be identified and held accountable. Our fight for truth and justice is far from over.”
Dobbins’ criminal history allowed her petty theft charge to be filed as the more significant felony classification, according to the State Attorney’s Office.
“The defendants in this case had different criminal histories that contributed toward their filed charges,” a spokesman for the office said.
Court records show the plea agreement did not include any sentencing range.
“I have not been offered any hope of reward, better treatment or certain type of sentence to get me to enter this plea of guilty or no contest,” Pulliam’s four-page plea acknowledgement stated. “I have not been promised by anyone, including my attorney, that I would actually serve any certain amount of time.”
What about the driver who struck Ilson Kim?
The agreement also did not specifically indicate if Pulliam cooperated with the remaining investigation into the third person involved ― the driver.
“The driver in this case remains at large — should anyone in the public have information, they should contact law enforcement,” the State Attorney’s Office said.
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That person, only identified in court by Dobbins as “City,” remains unaccounted for as the man who backed into Kim to escape with Pulliam and leave Dobbins behind but later pick her back up, records show. Kim ran out after Pulliam who was getting away with the merchandise. The three had pulled into a handicapped parking spot together at the Atlantic Boulevard beauty store, and then Pulliam and Dobbins are seen on security video perusing around the store for 20 minutes before the incident.
Dobbins didn’t actually take anything but was deemed a co-conspirator and also is seen in the video walking past Kim and offering no assistance, according to an arrest report.
What about Tashina Dobbins?
She has filed a notice of appeal to the District Court.
Dobbins is also awaiting trial on separate charges from a Family Dollar store robbery on March 31, which was the same day she was a no-show for her original sentencing date, court records show. Those charges are strong-arm robbery without a weapon, conspiring to commit retail theft with intent to sell stolen property – $750 or more, second offense, and act with others to distract in order to commit retail theft of $750 or more.
During her May 30 sentencing, Dobbins denied they had planned to steal anything but started to figure it out and then froze while walking out of the store.
“If I could take it back, I would,” Dobbins said sobbing. “I just keep imagining what if it was me. … I am not this person, but I accept responsibility, and I’m sorry.”
Borello didn’t mince his words, though, in sentencing her to the maximum under the law.
“I want to make it abundantly clear to you, Miss Dobbins, that I am not sentencing you based on whether or not I believe that you told the court the truth here today,” he told her. “However, in the interest of transparency, I will be frank with you and tell you I don’t know how much of what you said here was the truth. It seems relatively clear that there were certainly aspects of your testimony today that were not true.”
Kim’s two daughters also provided powerful victim impact statements about the loss of their mother and what she meant to others in the community, and the the coldness and lies by the defendant.
