Major Retailers Call for Action Amid Nationwide Theft Wave
Retailers Push AGs for Stricter Punishments for 'Out-of-Control' Shoplifting

Rite Aid shuttered in NYC's Hell's Kitchen had $200,000 in goods stolen in two months and CVS says it has experienced 300% increase in theft since the pandemic started

Retailers are pushing lawmakers for stricter punishments against shoplifters as a crimewave sweeps the nation, including in New York City where a Rite Aid store in midtown Manhattan has closed its doors after having $200,000 worth of product stolen in just two months.

CVS has also been plagued by a 300 percent increase in retail theft since the pandemic began, the company confirmed to DailyMail.com on Friday.

In addition to petty theft, stores in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago are experiencing large numbers of brazen thefts, burglaries and looting by organized crime gangs.

Leaders in the retail industry - which was already hard hit by the impacts of the pandemic, labor shortages and supply chain interruptions - argue theft has gotten out of control and security guards have their hands tied, as they are told to 'observe and report' and not get physical with criminals.

Retailers and citizens alike are urging state attorney generals and Congress to take action by passing new legislation, stricter laws on bail reform and felony thresholds, and creating anti-shoplifting task forces.

Crime has become so rampant that even the Rev. Al Sharpton has called on New York City Mayor Eric Adams to crack down on shoplifting, saying basic items such as toothpaste are now locked up at local pharmacies to try and prevent theft.

'It's out of control - it is just out of control,' Lisa LaBruno, SVP of operations and innovation at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, told Axios.

The CEOs of nearly two dozen retail companies have called on Congress to pass the INFORM Consumers Act, which would require online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to verify sellers and allow buyers access to seller verification and contact information. dailymail.co.uk

Is Theft Really the Reason Behind Big City Store Closures?
Shoplifters Aren't the Reason New York's Chain Pharmacies Are Closing
The tabloids ran with claims that out-of-control theft was killing our local drugstores. (This particular store did see a lot more thefts reported in 2021 than in previous years: 249 petit larcenies, compared to 48 in 2019.) The Post alone ran at least five related articles in the following days, pushing its crime-and-chaos narrative and dinging new Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for some of the policy changes he'd promised in his "day one" memo.

Almost immediately, Bragg announced the formation of the Manhattan Small Business Alliance with a mission to reduce shoplifting. And last week, he reversed several of his criminal-justice reform policies in response to related backlash.

Asked about the Manhattan store closures - and whether shoplifting played any role - a Rite Aid spokesperson says only that that the decisions "are based on a variety of factors that retail businesses consider such as overarching business strategy, lease and rent considerations, local business conditions and viability, and store performance." Again, no mention of shoplifting.

This general contraction is also an industry-wide trend: The prior month, CVS said that it would be closing about 10 percent of its stores in the coming three years - some 900 locations - in response to "evolving consumer needs." A spokesperson for CVS tells me that the company has not closed any stores due to shoplifting.

Regardless of the actual reasons for the closures, has there been a recent surge in shoplifting in New York's chain pharmacies at all? We don't really know. "The data that is shared with the public on the NYC Open Data Portal does have info on shoplifting, but it is only shared quarterly," meaning that the most recent data aren't yet available. In general, though, he says that shoplifting information tends to be unreliable because its reporting is variable and arbitrary. There's no national database, and across jurisdictions, shoplifting data is classified in many different ways that don't match. This makes it really hard to figure out what's going on at any time, let alone to compare across times and places.

"Let's put it this way, because you want evidence: Right now it is, by and large, anecdotal," says Read Hayes, a researcher at the University of Florida's engineering college and director of the Loss Prevention Research Council, which analyzes and models data for corporations on product loss from things like flooding, storms, and theft. (Hayes describes the politics of his work as "alt-middle.") "Unfortunately, shoplifting is not reported well, by the victims or the police," Herrmann says. curbed.com

NYC Shootings Up 30% - Robberies Up 35% - Grand Larceny Up 62%
Op-Ed: Weekend horrors show NYC must have new crime policy
Another weekend, another raft of horrors - from stabbings to shootings to hate crimes: How many will it take for the Democrats who run the Legislature to pass the modest reforms Mayor Eric Adams requests?

Driving it all is the progressive soft-on-crime ideology, district attorneys committed to not enforcing the law and legislators determined to keep lawbreakers out of jail.

Lawmakers and pols know the policies now in place enable crime. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has spent the past weeks reluctantly ceding only the most outrageous of his directives. The Legislature's leaders, meanwhile, refuse to make fundamental fixes to the no-bail and Raise the Age laws.

And so city crime rises on: Shootings up 30% over 2021; rapes and robberies, 35%; grand larceny, 62%. Accused felons with felony priors who get released under the no-bail law routinely get caught re-offending within months, as every potential Nash is basically encouraged to get worse.

Progressives' only priority is the safety of alleged criminals. Thus , alleged attempted murderer Darius Mungin was cut loose from Rikers this month after Bragg's prosecutors - called "very sympathetic" by Mungin's lawyer - worked to lower his bond, citing concerns over his safety in the prison. What of the safety of law-abiding citizens? nypost.com

NY's Bail Reform 'Disaster'
43% of people let go with no bail on a serious charge in NYC were rearrested
In 2019, the state legislature passed the new bail laws (slightly amended in 2020) that essentially replaced bail with "non-monetary release." Under this program, a judge who found that a defendant was a flight risk, or likely to not appear in court, could release the defendant on NMR, and place conditions on his release - pretrial services, pretrial supervision, passport surrender, maintain employment, for example. These are, essentially, the defendants who would have had bail set but are now released into the new NMR.

When we look at the numbers from that perspective, they are truly alarming. The bail laws passed by the Legislature have been a disaster for New York state and particularly New York City.

Consider: In New York City between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, 26,535 people were arrested for a felony. 69% of them, 18,239, had a prior conviction or a pending case. 4,062 of these defendants were released on non-monetary release. Of the 4,062 released on NMR, 1,737, or 43%, were rearrested while their case was pending.

Think about what that means. A defendant who has a prior conviction or a pending case gets arrested for a felony. A judge reviews his record and finds that he is a risk of fleeing. The judge cannot set bail and releases the defendant on non-monetary conditions. Almost half of them, 43%, get rearrested while their case is pending. nypost.com

Another State, Another ORC Bill
Missouri Bill Targets Organized Retail Theft Crime Rings
Mobs of thieves have hit up retailers around the country recently by quickly raiding stores and taking off with piles of merchandise in a matter of minutes. State Representative Lane Roberts, R-Joplin, is sponsoring a bill meant to address these organized retail theft crime rings, such as so-called smash-and-grab robberies. A Missouri House committee is considering his proposal.

"Currently retail theft has become a major issue for our retail industries in addition to the loss those deaths have become more and more violent," says Roberts. "Currently that lack of transparency online has made it easy to hide behind a screen name and fake business information and peddle stolen products."

The legislation would create the felony offense of organized retail theft and require online marketplaces to obtain and regularly verify certain information from high-volume third-party sellers.

Jeremy Sutherburg, Asset Protection Director with Walgreens in Missouri, says the company supports the plan. He says Walgreens noticed an uptick about three years ago in organized theft of items in bulk, including violent incidents, especially in St. Louis and Kansas City.

"About three years ago, I spent about $1.5 million a year, believe it or not, on security, and off duty law enforcement's just for our Walgreens stores to keep our team members protected. This year, I'm on pace to spend almost $4.5 million. Because when these individuals come in, if anybody gets in their way or even perceives to get in their way, they're immediately going to threat with violence," he says.

Tom Dempsey, who lobbies on behalf of Amazon, says the online retail company opposes the plan. missourinet.com

The Evolution of Shoplifting in San Francisco
Viral Retail Theft Videos Spark Outage - But What Does the Data Say?
Incidents of shoplifting in San Francisco have taken a prominent place in both local and national dialogue. Public perception of the crime has been fueled by viral videos, media coverage and the outraged calls of some residents. Yet according to statistics from the San Francisco Police Department, incidents of reported retail theft are down compared to years prior.

So we wanted to know: How has the city been talking about-and addressing-shoplifting over the past 15 years?

We took a look back at Board of Supervisors meetings, Police Commission meetings, and other legislative forums, scouring for major milestones in San Francisco's long-running effort to stem retail crime.

And what we found might surprise you. Watch the video for a rundown of that evolution. sfstandard.com

Baltimore: City and state leaders back crime fighting initiative for "The Block"

Walmart LP Recognized by PD
Boone, NC: Police Department Citizen's Award presented to Walmart Loss Prevention Associate
The Boone Police Department has announced the recipient of their Citizen's Award to Tish Miller, Loss Prevention Specialist at Walmart in Boone. "For several years, Tish Miller has gone above and beyond to support and encourage our police department." the Department said in presenting the award. "As the Loss Prevention Specialist at Walmart in Boone, she has assisted us on numerous investigations, has come along side us to conduct loss prevention training to local businesses and has volunteered with us on community outreaches." the Department said in presenting the award. "This is only to name a few things that Tish has been a part of in public and behind the scenes. Her heart to serve represents the best in our community! Congratulations!!" the Department said in presenting the award. wataugaonline.com

Homeless & Hungry Retail Workers
Business Booms at Kroger-Owned Grocery Stores, but Workers Are Left Behind

A number of the stores' nearly 500,000 employees have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks.

Business has boomed during the pandemic for Kroger. The company, which is based in Cincinnati, said in December that it was expecting sales growth of at least 13.7 percent over two years. The company's stock has risen about 36 percent over the past year.

But that success has not trickled down to its vast work force of nearly 500,000 employees, a number of whom have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks to feed their families. A brief strike in Colorado last month by workers at dozens of Kroger-owned King Soopers locations brought renewed scrutiny to the issues of pay and working conditions for grocery workers, who have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic.

The Economic Roundtable surveyed more than 10,000 Kroger workers in Washington, Colorado and Southern California about their working conditions for a report commissioned by four units of the food workers union, and found that about 75 percent of Kroger workers said they were food insecure, meaning they lacked consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. About 14 percent said they were homeless or had been homeless in the previous year, and 63 percent said they did not earn enough money to pay for basic expenses every month.

"There is a race to the bottom that's been going on for a while with Walmart and other large retail stores, and also restaurants, and to reverse that trend is not easy," said Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable. nytimes.com

Pro-Union Sentiment Sweeps the Retail Industry
What the Amazon union do-over in Alabama means for the future of retail

U.S. consumers, especially younger ones, harbor new expectations about the workplace that businesses may not be able to ignore.

For the second time in less than a year, Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, are voting on whether to organize. Experts say these workers could prevail this time, reflecting growing dissatisfaction with work conditions - especially at lower-paying jobs like retail, fast food and e-commerce facilities - and higher expectations of businesses on the part of both workers and consumers that may be boosting public opinion of unions.

"There has been a significant increase in pro-union sentiment, and we've also seen a spike in worker resistance and worker protests," said Kent Wong, director of the Labor Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Many people are dismayed by the way some store, warehouse and factory workers have been left unprotected against COVID-19 and given inadequate sick time, he said.

A healthier economy and worker shortages could also provide a more favorable environment for the pro-labor activity occurring at several retailers, including in Bessemer, according to several experts. retaildive.com

Trucker Frustration Spreads to the U.S.
US truckers more frustrated by bad pay and long hours than Covid-19
Canadian truckers recently shut down North America's busiest land border crossing to protest Covid-19 mandates. But in the United States, truck drivers have long been frustrated with other problems, like bad pay for long hours and weeks away from home.

Those issues were thrust into the spotlight when the pandemic disrupted supply chains across the globe, leaving many American store shelves empty.

The tough working conditions for long-haul truck drivers in particular make it incredibly difficult to retain drivers, who often leave for other companies or quit the industry altogether. The average annualized turnover rate of long-haul drivers at larger companies was 96% during the third quarter of last year, according to the American Trucking Associations, a trade group. At smaller carriers, the turnover rate was 73%.

The Biden administration has taken several steps to help recruit new drivers and keep experienced ones on the job. The massive infrastructure legislation passed last year also starts to address some of these workforce challenges, but experts say it's going to take time to rebuild the pipeline of truck drivers. cnn.com

Where does Super Bowl Loser Merch Go?
What happens to the losing team's merchandise after the Super Bowl?
So what happens with all that pre-made apparel from the losing team? They don't just get sent to the landfill or incinerated. The clothing has a second life somewhere far away from the team's hometown, and getting there is quite the journey.

That process is managed by the nonprofit Good360, an organization that matches donations with local nonprofits around the world. This is Good360's eighth year working with the NFL on repurposing merchandise not just from the Super Bowl losers, but also from the teams who lose the AFC and NFC Championship games, said chief development and marketing officer Shari Rudolph.

Good360 works with its network of nonprofits to find a recipient. "It could go anywhere from Africa, the Middle East, some regions in Asia or South America, but they all leave the U.S. and they are put in the hands of a nonprofit that has a verified need for those particular types of items," Rudolph said. mywabashvalley.com

Will retailers find it harder to pass along price increases in the months ahead?

Update: San Diego County, CA: 3 arrested, accused of stealing 329 items from two local Victoria Secret stores
Two women and a man from the Bay Area were arrested last week in San Diego, accused of stealing 329 items from two local Victoria Secret stores. Three Bay Area residents are in custody, accused of taking part in an organized retail theft ring with targets up and down the California coast, including a pair of Victoria's Secret locations in San Diego County. The CHP said Shyonie Myshae Davis, 20; of San Francisco; Ahjanae Latania Anetta Woods, 21, of Antioch; and Wessaun Leetay Johnson, 18, of Antioch; rented a car last Thursday and made their way south, eventually being spotted at the Mission Valley Mall, Plaza Bonita Mall, UTC mall, the Carlsbad Premium Outlets and the Carlsbad Forum mall. As of Monday, Davis and Johnson remain in county custody. They are both being held on $25,000 bail and are charged with organized retail theft of more than $950, conspiracy to commit a crime, second\-degree burglary, receiving stolen property worth more than $950 and grand theft of property, all felony counts. They are due in court in Vista on Wednesday afternoon. nbcsandiego.com

New York, NY: Four Duane Reade Pharmacies Robbed in 13 Hours; Here's What Police Say Was Taken
Four UWS Duane Reade pharmacies were robbed on Friday in a span of 13 hours - one twice, an NYPD detective told WSR. Police say all of the thefts were committed by a man who fit the same description: Black, roughly 40 years old, with a height of about 5′ 9″. At 2:42 a.m., a man allegedly stole $155 worth of vitamins from the store at 609 Columbus Avenue (90th Street) At 3:15 a.m., it was ten 12-packs of soda worth approximately $70 from the store at 2522 Broadway (94th-95th). "The Super Bowl," the detective commented. At 10:00 a.m., the heist involved $60 worth of toothpaste from the store at 700 Columbus Avenue (94th-95th). At 10:56 a.m., it was $74 worth of soap from the store at 2683 Broadway (103rd). At 4 p.m., a man allegedly stole from 700 Columbus again, this time taking wipes, ointments, and flowers. "Valentine's Day," said the detective. No arrest was made.  westsiderag.com

Gloucester Township, NJ: Power tool bandit captured after committing thefts on a daily basis
After stealing power tools from home improvement stores on a daily basis, police have captured their suspect. In the beginning of February 2022, the Gloucester Township Police Department Retail Theft Unit began investigating a male shoplifter, later identified as Ramon Ramirez of Gibbsboro NJ, who was stealing various high end power tools from local home improvement stores on a daily basis. On February 9th 2022, Gloucester Township Retail Theft Detectives coordinated with Lowe's Asset Protection and developed a pro-active strategy to end these thefts. During the operation, Ramirez entered the business at 1233 PM and concealed numerous Dewalt power tools and packages of drill bits. Ramirez exited the business and was immediately apprehended by awaiting detectives. During the investigation, Ramirez was charged with nine (9) counts of shoplifting with a combined retail loss over two thousand dollars ($2000.00) and additionally processed on ten (10) outstanding warrants. He was released pending a future court appearance. shorenewsnetwork.com

Port Saint Lucie, FL: $900 worth of GameStop merchandise stolen, thief arrested

Nashville, TN: Dillards cologne shoplifter busted again, charged with Burglary due to 2018 previous charge at same store