This is the best summary I could come up with:

CROYDON, England, Oct 18 (Reuters) - As shopkeeper Ben Selvaratnam recounted how his grocery store in south London was being targeted by shoplifters up to 10 times a day, he had to stop to eject two men who had brazenly slipped two bottles of premium beer into their carrier bag.

The incident, on a Tuesday morning, was unremarkable at his Freshfields Market convenience store following a "massive increase" in theft and violence that he and other shop owners put down to a lack of response from authorities to retail crime.

"We stopped reporting incidents to the police because we just felt, for whatever reason, budget cuts or whatnot, they weren't as responsive as we needed them to be," Selvaratnam told Reuters in his shop in Croydon, where his butcher doubles up as a security guard.

It's a similar story in Glasgow, Scotland, where Girish Jeeva was recently left bloodied after being punched in the face when he challenged a man stealing from his grocery store in the Barmulloch district.

The issue of theft and violence has been raised by many of Britain's biggest retailers in recent months, including Tesco (TSCO.L), John Lewis and Primark, echoing similar reports in the United States and elsewhere.

The two British shopkeepers said the main protagonists were local organised criminal gangs, often hooded and masked and sometimes carrying weapons like machetes, who target higher-value products like alcohol, boxed chocolates and meat.

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