Forbes: Despite Skepticism Over The Rise In Retail Theft, Stores Are Adopting
Police Technology
Companies that sell body cams to law enforcement
are now chasing a promising new market even as critics question the extent of
the problem.
To
battle what they call a rising wave of organized theft, retailers have hired
security guards, locked merchandise behind glass, installed face- and
license-plate-recognition software and deployed shopping carts whose wheels lock
automatically when they’re pushed beyond a certain range.
The problem has only gotten worse, they say.
However, media investigations, as well as a recent report from analysts at the
investment bank William Blair, have questioned the severity of losses from theft
and suggested that retailers are using the issue to divert attention from other
problems, including inventory mismanagement. Viral videos of smash-and-grab
robberies have been politicized, some argue, to criticize legislation that
relaxed the penalties for shoplifting in some states and promote the notion that
lawlessness has flourished under certain elected officials.
No matter.
Stores are powering up against
crime. The latest: body cameras.
Dozens of retailers, including
25 of the 100 biggest, began exploring or using the law-enforcement technology
in their stores in roughly the last 18 months,
the largest body-cam manufacturers told Forbes. Body cams on retail employees
are already pervasive in the U.K. at stores like
Tesco, the
eighteenth-largest retailer in the world.
“This is one of the top
three technologies that retailers are exploring,” David
Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations at the
National Retail Federation,
told Forbes. The other two are technologies that leverage artificial
intelligence or radio frequency identification, which tracks the whereabouts of
an item.
“The minute something pops
off in a store, everyone has their iPhone out. Retailers are starting to say
we need to have our own side of this.”
-James
Stark, retail segment development manager at
Axis Communications
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Mall
of America, the biggest in the U.S., recently outfitted its entire security
force with body cams. The mall hopes the technology, which it issued to officers
in April, will help it document, and maybe even deter, some of the felonious
behavior that comes with its 32 million annual visitors. Mall management has
instructed its officers to activate the body cams when they’re responding to an
incident, with the camera able to also capture the 30 seconds before it’s turned
on.
“It allows us to go back in time, essentially,” Will Bernhjelm, who runs
security for the suburban Minneapolis mall, told Forbes. “To get the
entire story.”
Two dozen retailers are
exploring pilots or
have deployed body cams made by Axon, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company that
developed Tasers,
The hope is that they’ll not only help diffuse certain situations, but give
stores more evidence to prosecute shoplifters. At one big-box retailer, an
asset-protection employee wearing a bodycam confronted a woman who had gone into
the changing room and put merchandise in her purse and donned four layers of
clothing. She spit on the employee and cursed at them. When she was informed
that she was being recorded, she dropped the merchandise and quietly left. She
has not returned to the store since.
Many retailers are trying the body cams on their security officers first, then
looking at rolling them out to their loss-prevention employees, store managers
and employees, in that order, over time, said manufacturers. Hy-Vee, a
Des-Moines based grocer, has equipped the security officers that are stationed
in its stores with both tasers and body cams from Axon.
Critics, however, have questioned whether shoplifting is really to blame for
retailers’ struggles.
Retail analysts led by Dylan Carden and Phillip Blee of Chicago-based investment
bank William Blair said in an October 25 report that while theft is on the rise,
there is some indication that retailers have exaggerated the problem and used it
to mask tightening margins and mistakes in managing inventory following the
pandemic.
“We also believe some more recent permanent store closures enacted under the
cover of shrink relate to underperformance of these locations,” the researchers
wrote. “Ultimately, we believe recent actions to stoke government response,
incremental mitigation efforts by companies, and some early signs of stability
in shrink metrics all point to a more manageable issue looking into 2024.”
forbes.com
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