IMAGINE you’re at your local convenience store when you see a youngster brazenly stealing a bag of crisps.

It would be easy to shrug it off as someone else’s problem – but instead, you do the right thing and try to put a stop to it.

That’s what happened to Keith Mann at his local Co-Op.

Having caught someone in the act of committing an offence, he tried to exercise his right to carry out a citizen’s arrest.

The staff, however, stuck to the Co-Op policy book – which said they should call the police but not intervene if they felt they might be putting themselves at risk. So the offender was long gone by the time the police arrived.

Of course, there is more than one point of view here.

How much can you reasonably expect of shop staff when it comes to protecting their employer’s property? And how far should anyone risk their own safety to defend a 50p bag of crisps?

This was hardly the Great Train Robbery. But when too many petty offences go unchallenged, a whole community feels less safe, and the youngsters involved can feel emboldened to do things which will land them in more serious trouble.

If that boy could have been detained until the police arrived, the Co-Op would have had every reason to be grateful to Mr Mann. And so, eventually, would the boy himself.