Meadowhall Crime: These were the 800 crimes committed at popular shopping centre over one year

It's the place we love to go, for shopping, eating and entertainment.

But while most of us who head to Meadowhall behave ourselves, figures obtained by The Star have revealed that over a 12 month period up until September last year, police had to deal with 816 crimes there.

The figures, obtained under a freedom of information request to South Yorkshire Police, show that someone was a victim of a reported 'violence against the person' incident nearly each week on average. But by far and away the largest number of crimes reported at the popular shopping centre was theft.

Other crimes to have been reported at the centre included arson and criminal damage, indecent assault, public order offences, robberies and incidents described as 'miscellaneous acts against society'.

We asked police for the list of crimes committed at the centre between the start of September 2022 and the end of August 2023. They provided us with a list of the incidents that they had logged as happening there.

A number of incidents have been highlighted at the shopping centre in recent months.

In August, police put out an appeal after a suspected thief went on a £4,500 spending spree at the centre, using bank cards reported stolen from a woman's bag in a Sheffield gym.

Last month, police officers released CCTV images of two men they wanted to speak to in connection with the theft of a white Hyundai car from the centre's car park.

And Meadowhall police won an award after arresting 905 people this year, up to November. A five-strong squad of four officers and a sergeant detained an average of three people a day every day in 2022, and also recovered £77,000 of stolen goods.

It bagged them the Partnership Award ‘for outstanding work with outside organisations’ at the South Yorkshire Police Awards.

These are the crimes reported at Meadowhall, between September 1, 2022 and August 31, 2023.

Theft: 776

Violence against the person: 51

Arson and criminal damage: 17

Public order offences: 17

Miscellaneous crimes against society: 15

Vehicle offences: 15

Drug offences: 5

Sexual offences: 4

Robbery: 3

Burglary 2

Possession of weapons 1

Bosses at Meadowhall say it is one of the safest places in the city to shop, with security measures including a visitor code of conduct, a team of security staff, a partnership with South Yorkshire Police, including a dedicated police station on site, as well as CCTV and ANPR monitoring the site.

The centre also runs a dedicated retail crime initiative in partnership with retailers to share information between its security teams and individual retailers supporting the quick identification of, and response to, potential safety or security issues, and the police or its security team attend every reported incident at the centre to investigate.

Darren Pearce, centre director at Meadowhall, said: “The safety of our visitors, colleagues and retail partners is our number one priority and a responsibility that we don’t take lightly. We have dedicated police and security teams always monitoring the centre and our car parks and we ask everyone to work in partnership with them to help make Meadowhall a welcoming space for everyone to enjoy.”