Retail Body Cams Cut Violent Incidents by 11%
UK: Poundland aims to reduce retail crime with Motorola body cameras

The technology has already led to a 11% reduction in violent incidents targeting store employees.

UK discount retailer Poundland has partnered with Motorola Solutions to bolster security at its retail stores across the country and reduce violence and theft. Motorola has deployed its VT100 body cameras to frontline employees throughout the retailer's locations.

The VT100 is part of an extensive suite of safety and security technologies provided by Motorola Solutions for enterprises. During an initial trial phase, Poundland observed a decline in incidents.

There has been an 11% reduction in aggressive encounters involving staff members, and a noticeable decrease in instances of shoplifting and theft.

Motorola Solutions enterprise sales corporate vice-president Neil Thomas said: "A safer environment for frontline workers and shoppers alike underpins everything retailers do.

"The VT100 empowers in-store staff with the information they need to decisively protect their employees, customers and stores."

The initiative has also enhanced Poundland's Security and Loss Prevention team's ability to objectively document events, thereby streamlining investigations. Along with the VT100 body cameras, Poundland uses Motorola Solutions' VideoManager digital evidence management solution to efficiently organise video data.

The system allows for the correlation of body camera footage with CCTV recordings and other relevant incident information. The deployment of body cameras comes in response to growing personal safety concerns among UK retail workers. retail-insight-network.com


Record-Breaking Success Against ORC
CHP's Organized Retail Crime Task Force achieves record-breaking success in 2024
After a record-setting 2023 combatting organized retail crime, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) continues to aggressively disrupt and dismantle illegal operations throughout California. Thanks to the state's continued investment in combating organized retail crime, the CHP is proud to announce its most successful year yet for the Organized Retail Crime Task Force (ORCTF). In 2024, the task force set new records for investigations, arrests, and recovered stolen goods since its launch in 2019-surpassing all expectations and demonstrating its unparalleled effectiveness.

In the 12 months of 2024, ORCTF efforts have resulted in:

✔ 879 investigations
✔ 1,707 arrests
✔ 676,227 stolen goods recovered
✔ $13.5 million in recovered goods value

With increased funding since 2022, CHP has expanded its efforts statewide, adding more investigators and enhancing proactive crime prevention strategies. This past holiday season, ORCTF teams partnered with local law enforcement and more than 50 retailers to safeguard shoppers, merchants, and retail districts across California. Their heightened presence deterred crime and led to in-the-moment arrests of retail criminals.

CHP's unwavering commitment to stopping organized retail crime underscores its dedication to public safety. Recent legislation signed by Governor Gavin Newsom has further strengthened law enforcement tools to hold offenders accountable, reinforcing the ORCTF's mission to ensure the safety and security of California communities.

For more information about CHP's Organized Retail Theft Program, click here. antiochherald.com


Prop 36 Can Restore Law & Order in CA - If Enacted Properly
The Importance of Effective Implementation of Proposition 36
Proposition 36, endorsed by the California Contract Cities Association, offers a comprehensive approach to tackling public safety issues while addressing the root causes of crime. The proper implementation of this initiative is crucial for our state to maintain order and protect our communities.

Proposition 36 aims to strengthen public safety by enhancing penalties for organized retail theft and drug distribution while simultaneously focusing on rehabilitation for repeat offenders. This dual approach is essential to address the frustration and unsustainability of the current system, which often allows repeat offenders to escape with minimal consequences.

The necessity for Proposition 36 was underscored by alarming statistics. In California, shoplifting surged by 39% in 2023, reaching its highest level since 2000. Overall retail theft, including commercial burglaries, increased by 14% in 2023 and was 18% higher than in 2019. These trends reflected a significant rise in crime that demanded a more robust and effective response.

By targeting crime networks, Prop 36 empowers law enforcement to aggregate theft values and impose harsher penalties, dismantling organized crime rings and mitigating their impact on communities. The proposition also tackles drug abuse, a significant root cause of criminal behavior, by prioritizing treatment for repeat offenders. After two convictions for hard drugs such as methamphetamine, heroin, or fentanyl, the third offense can trigger a court-ordered treatment option, with a fourth offense resulting in state prison time. This balance of rehabilitation and stricter consequences aims to reduce recidivism and alleviate the strain on law enforcement.

The California Contract Cities Association supports the decisive implementation of Proposition 36 to achieve its goals of enhanced public safety and effective rehabilitation. Proper planning, resource allocation, and community education are all essential to ensure the law's success. Additionally, a robust partnership with the State of California is imperative to secure sufficient resources and ensure uniform application across all jurisdictions. iecn.com


Sunglasses Shops Get Serious About Fighting Theft
Retail crime: "You shouldn't feel like you have to lock the door"

Optometrists have outlined the financial and emotional toll of shoplifting as British Retail Consortium figures illustrate rising levels of retail crime

Optometrists have described the financial and emotional effects of retail crime as data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) illustrates an uplift in violence and shoplifting. The 2024 BRC Crime Survey outlined how UK retail workers experienced 1300 daily incidents of violence or abuse - a 43% increase on the previous year.

Edwards & Walker Opticians in Doncaster introduced a locked door policy in August 2024 after two men grabbed sunglasses from the window display while a third man distracted staff by asking to book an appointment.

Basra shared that the ability to manage who is coming in and out of the shop has made staff feel much safer. However, the enhanced security measure creates a potential barrier for new customers entering the practice.

Basra observed that the High Street was already struggling to attract foot traffic before the introduction of additional security measures. "You shouldn't feel like you have to lock the door whilst you're at work just to be safe," she said.

While retail theft takes a financial toll on the practice, Basra shared that protecting the wellbeing of her staff and patients is her key priority. aop.org.uk
 
 
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Amazon 'Doesn't Really Understand' Physical Retail
Amazon, king of online retail, can't figure out physical stores

The e-commerce giant is closing more of its convenience stores; 'I don't think they really understand retail,' a consultant says

The e-commerce giant has shrunk its Amazon Go convenience store headcount by about half since 2023, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, struggling to attract customers to stores they can pay electronically without interfacing with staff.

"I don't think they really understand retail," Nick Egelanian, president of retail-advisory firm SiteWorks Retail, told The Journal. "Running warehouses and shipping stuff efficiently is not the same as greeting a customer and saying, 'May I help you?'"

Jeff Edison, chief executive of Phillips Edison & Co. (PECO), which owns grocery-store-anchored shopping centers, agreed. "They keep testing these concepts thinking one of them is going to connect with the consumer in a big way," he told The Journal. "But can you think of any examples where they've actually done the bricks-and-mortar retail well? I can't."

Amazon has tested and closed dozens of stores in the past year, including bookstores, clothing stories, and locations stocked with its most popular items. It has found some success licensing its "Just Walk Out" technology that it uses for Amazon Go.

Ed Coury, senior managing director at retail-advisory firm RCS Real Estate Advisors, said if one considers the failed stores a testing ground for the Just Walk Out technology, they can be seen as a success.

"It was an investment well spent in developing technology," Coury said. "But the growth plans that they had for that brand are over."  finance.yahoo.com
 

Putting the Workplace Safety Puzzle Together
Safety's Challenge: Piecing Together the Puzzle

Problem-solving, incident analyses and critical thinking are key components to improving workplace safety.

An Important Tool

Visual literacy is an important tool we can use to piece together the causes of a close call or incident. It is the ability to make sense and to bring meaning to a broad range of visual information. The data points are usually physical and can include documents-recordkeeping and reports. Trained safety and health professionals, employees, supervisors and other personnel become fluent in articulating what they have seen, can speak accurately about their observations and their critical thinking, be cognizant of and put aside any biases, communicate their findings, and take remedial actions.

Unintended Consequences

Failing to notice a hazard in your visual field, missing the obvious, is called inattentional blindness. These obvious hazards become part of the noise and part of the background. This can be due to confirmation bias-we tend to see what we expect to see. We can walk past exposed wiring, through inadequate lighting, poorly maintained workstations, or a missing machine guard 1,000 times without noticing. Research shows we may only see as little as 10% of what we look at. The remaining 90% is filled in by our brain based on memory and past experiences. We may not see up to 90% of the risks. Relying on memory and history heightens the risk of close calls, and both minor and serious injuries and fatalities.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking skills, taught with visual literacy training, involve questioning, analyzing, interpreting, evaluating and reaching a judgment about what you see (what does it mean and what are you doing to do about it?), hear or intuit based on clear, precise, fair and flexible thoughtfulness. Critical thinking is core to solving safety and health puzzles.  ehstoday.com
 

The Walmart Expansion Continues
Walmart buys Pittsburgh-area mall for $34M

In the first major purchase of its kind for the company, the retailer tapped a Texas firm to lead redevelopment of the 1.2 million square foot property.

Walmart is now the proud owner of a shopping mall near Pittsburgh, the company confirmed to Retail Dive Tuesday. It plans to redevelop the Monroeville Mall and Annex in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in partnership with Cypress Equities, a Texas-based real estate and development firm.

This is the first time the company acquired an operating mall of this size, Walmart told Retail Dive. The company said it was unable to share specific plans about the Monroeville Mall project.

The mall deal further builds on Walmart's store expansion plans. In 2023, the company said it invested over $500 million to update 117 stores. Then last year, the company announced an expansive, five-year plan to build or expand 150 locations and remodel 650 stores. The new and remodeled stores will feature expanded product selections and improved layouts, as part of a larger goal to enhance store growth. retaildive.com


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More Ransomware Attacks But Less Victims Paid Up
Ransomware payments fell 35% in 2024

Cyberattacks using ransomware spiked in the second half of the year, but fewer victims paid up.

Cryptocurrency ransomware payments fell from a record $1.25 billion in 2023 to nearly $814 million in 2024, a report released Wednesday by Chainalysis showed. The 35% year-over-year decline in payments comes despite an increase in the second half of 2024 in "ransomware events," or when cybercrime gangs call out victims in data leak sites.

Chainalysis noted that the decline occurred despite observing some "exceptionally large" ransomware payments, such as the record-setting $75 million payment to Dark Angels last year.

Chainalysis attributed the steep decline in ransomware payments to several factors, including significant actions from law enforcement agencies across the globe. For example, an international coalition of law enforcement agencies last February conducted the first phase of "Operation Cronos," which disrupted the prolific LockBit ransomware gang. Authorities seized LockBit's infrastructure, cryptocurrency accounts and decryption keys. In later phases of the operation, law enforcement agencies arrested several alleged members of the gang and indicted the alleged ringleader, Russian national Dimitry Yuryevich Khoroshev.

The 35% drop also is due to "improved victim resilience" and a growing number of organizations refusing to pay ransoms, Chainalysis found. "Crackdowns and collaboration with incident response firms and blockchain experts helped disrupt many ransomware groups, reducing their profitability," the company said. "Victims also demonstrated greater resistance to ransom demands, widening the gap between demands and payments." cybersecuritydive.com


Enforcing Data Privacy Laws
State Data Privacy Regulators Are Coming. What Story Will You Tell Them?

Regulators are ready to enforce new state data privacy laws. Here's how experts say organizations can stay compliant and avoid penalties.

If you get a call from John Eakins at the Delaware Attorney General's office, you've already filed a data breach notice with the state, so you know there's a problem. What information security teams do next could mean the difference between getting slapped with a hefty fine or getting off with a warning, along with your reputation intact.

Delaware Deputy Attorney General Eakins is in charge of enforcing the new state regulations under the Delaware Personal Data Privacy Act (DPDPA), first passed by lawmakers in 2023 and just coming into effect on Jan. 1. He says organizations operating in Delaware should expect a call from his office after reporting a major breach. Then he is going to want to drill down on two specific criteria: the harm caused and whether it can be fixed.

Twenty states, including Delaware, have passed data privacy regulations as of 2025, but these new laws aren't really necessary for states to levy penalties for data breaches, Kaltsounis points out. Federal law could be used in many of these instances, half the states already have information security requirements on the books, and nearly all the states have some form of an "unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices" (UDAP) law, which could also be used as enforcement mechanisms for many data breach instances, he adds.

What new privacy legislation has done for regulators isn't so much putting rules on the books - it's allocating more money toward enforcing lax data privacy among organizations, including money to hire in-house expertise. Pair that with federal deregulation under the Trump administration, and states are in a prime position to fill the gap. darkreading.com


Are You Exposing Your Organization?
DeepSeek surge hits companies, posing security risks

The Trump administration is scrutinizing the AI app, Italy and Taiwan have banned it, and companies have blocked it.

Employees attempting to use a company device to access Chinese tech startup DeepSeek's wildly popular artificial intelligence app could inadvertently be exposing their organization to threats such as cyberespionage, experts warned.

A major red flag, they say, is DeepSeek's terms of service, which states that user data is stored on servers in China and governed under Chinese law, which mandates cooperation with the country's intelligence agencies.

The Chinese government has long been accused of engaging in espionage campaigns to advance goals such as stealing intellectual property from Western organizations or gathering geopolitical intelligence. It has consistently denied the allegations.

"China is very good at mining data," Andrew Grealy, head of Armis Labs, a division of San Francisco, California-based cybersecurity firm Armis Inc., said in an interview. "Anything that's in the terabytes is not an issue for them." cybersecuritydive.com


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