12th Annual New England LP Expo Brings Together
Over 180 LP, Law Enforcement, Vendor Professionals

On Thursday September 13th the retail associations from across New England led by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts Loss Prevention Committee hosted its 12th annual conference at the DCU Center in Worcester MA.

This year’s event brought together 181 Loss Prevention, Law Enforcement and Vendor professionals to discuss trends in Analytics, Organized Retail Crime, Emerging Fraud Trends and local regulatory changes. Bob Moraca, Vice President of Loss Prevention for the National Retail Federation kicked off the event with a “state of the union”, giving great perspective on our industry, where it stands and where it’s headed.

Detective Mark Solomon from Greenwich CT police department appeared for his second time at our conference giving an update on skimming and fraud trends he is seeing. Shanon LaCorte, Assistant Deputy Attorney General, Organized Crime Task Force, New York State Office of the Attorney General gave an overview of Operation Sticky Fingers and the investigative steps taken to close a significant ORC case.

Kellie Woefel from Profitect gave an excellent presentation on prescriptive analytics and the power that technology has to drive better business decisions and execution. Department of Transitional Assistance: Corey Belanger, State Law Enforcement Bureau Outreach Manager and Anne O’Sullivan Asst. Commissioner for Compliance gave an update on regulations regarding prohibited use of EBT in retail establishments. Our keynote speaker was Todd McGhee, Co-Founder of Protecting the Homeland Innovations, LLC. His presentation on Active Shooter Awareness served as a stark reminder of the real-life situations we can potentially encounter in our personal and professional lives.

This year we were able to award two individuals that have made significant contributions to the New England LP community over the years:

Kevin Plante of Party City was awarded the Distinguished Service Award. Kevin Plante stepped down from RAM Loss Prevention Committee after last year’s conference following almost thirteen years as the Chairman. Under Kevin’s guidance and direction this committee has grown from a few individuals to an expansive network of loss prevention professionals that constantly engage, communicate and support each other. This conference has grown from one focused solely on ORC to a more comprehensive Loss Prevention Expo, ORC legislation has been passed and NEORCA has grown to a network of over 1000 individuals. Kevin’s accolades and contributions extend far behind what was just listed.

Ken Spurling of Sephora was awarded the Loss Prevention Person of the Year award. Ken has been an integral part in developing and driving adoption with NEORCA. Ken has also played a big role in the partnership between NEORCA and NESPIN, a partnership which has led to several trainings of several hundred officers to better educate them on Organized Retail Crime. Ken is very active in various LP retailer meetings and is a great peer to all of us in the LP field!

We’d like to thank all the presenters, solution providers and especially the following people for their support in making this event happen:

• Andi Shea and Ryan Kearney -Retailers Association of Massachusetts
• Jason Adams- Apple Inc
• Kevin Foote- Staples
• Alisha Le- Wegmans
• Matt Taylor- Wegmans
• Greg LaPre- Security Consulting

We look forward to another great event in 2019!