Agilence Delivers an Average 3318% Annual Return on Investment for Customers

Drive Research Finds Loss Prevention Analytics Investments with Agilence are Paid Back in 38 Days on Average

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J., March 22, 2022 -- Drive Research today published a report that finds Agilence, the leader in Loss Prevention Analytics, delivers an average of 3318% Return on Investment (ROI) for its customers, with an average payback period of 38 days.

"Reducing loss is an ongoing struggle for retail and restaurant brands," says Agilence CEO Russ Hawkins. "But these results are a testament to the quantifiable value we are providing to our customers. They are experiencing benefits extremely quickly and can sustain those results over time."

Read more in the Vendor Spotlight column below
 

Lawmakers Demand DOJ Action to Curb Retail Theft
Rep. Ken Buck leads letter to DOJ demanding action on surging retail crime

Colorado lawmaker and more than a dozen other Republicans urge federal action on crime wave.

More than a dozen Republicans sent a joint letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding action on surging retail crime over the past year-plus. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., the prime author of the letter, told Fox News the Biden administration must act to provide for the security of all citizens.

"I urge the Justice Department to take action and develop a national strategy to address the alarming rise in organized retail crime," his letter reads.

In an interview with Fox News on Saturday, Buck said he hopes the DOJ will take the nationwide surge in retail thefts "more seriously" than at present.

"We need to have a federal effort that is supporting the effort that's going on in state and local law enforcement. These gangs are national and sometimes international. And so, the federal government should get involved in helping out. They shouldn't necessarily take the lead, but they should get involved in helping out," he said.

In the letter, Buck and his colleagues wrote that there has been a "sharp rise" in such crime in the past several months, and that local law enforcement agencies are in danger of being overwhelmed.

The letter also cites the Biden Justice Department’s recent success in capturing $4.5 million in profits from stolen merchandise through its Operation Booster Buster – which broke up a large-scale theft ring in Tulsa, Okla., and surrounding areas. Twenty-nine people were charged in that operation, in cooperation with Oklahoma authorities. foxnews.com

Petty Thieves Plague San Francisco. ‘These Last Two Years Have Been Insane.’

Small-business owners have been hit particularly hard by additional security and repair costs

Although violent crime in San Francisco is lower than in many other major U.S. cities, business owners, residents and visitors here are dealing with a rash of thefts, burglaries and car break-ins.

Among the 25 largest U.S. cities, San Francisco has had the highest property-crime rate in four of the most recent six years for which data is available, bucking the long-term national decline in such crimes that began in the 1990s. Property crimes declined in San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic, but rose 13% in 2021. Burglaries in the city are at their highest levels since the mid-1990s. There were 20,663 thefts from vehicles last year—almost 57 a day—a 39% increase from the prior year, although still below the record of 31,398 in 2017, according to the police.

Smashed storefronts are so common that the city launched a program to fix them with public money. Car owners leave notes declaring there is nothing of value in their vehicles, or leave their windows open to save themselves from broken glass. Videos of shoplifters hauling goods out of drugstores such as Walgreens have gone viral, and a smash-and-grab robbery by 20 to 40 people at a Louis Vuitton store last November made the national news.

Owners of small businesses say the costs of security and repairs are eating into profits already diminished by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the Castro, the neighborhood where Cliff’s is located, shops have recorded nearly 100 instances of smashed windows and doors that cost $170,000 to repair since the beginning of 2020, according to the neighborhood’s merchant association.

Criminologists say San Francisco’s high density of retail stores and its mix of tourists, commuters and wealthy residents have made it an inviting target for thieves. Locals point to a host of other factors that may be exacerbating the problem, including the tactics of the police and prosecutors, statewide changes intended to reduce the number of people behind bars, and the city’s dual crises of drug use and homelessness. There has been no end of finger-pointing.

Despite the city’s long history of progressive politics, some business owners and residents are demanding that political leaders shift to a more law-and-order approach.

Some former police officials and business owners blame District Attorney Boudin’s focus on keeping people who commit small-scale crimes out of prison. Others point the finger at the police, who cleared just 6% of the city’s property crimes in 2020, more than 8 percentage points lower than the national average. wsj.com

LA & SF DAs Facing Recalls - Voters Have Had Enough
‘Crime Tourism’ Is Now a Thing in California?

Voters just might be ready to reject lawlessness and disorder.

It seems that California is now attracting an entirely new category of vacationers.

Sid Garcia reports for KABC-TV in Los Angeles:

Law enforcement agencies call it “crime tourism” -- groups of thieves from South America traveling to California to burglarize homes...

They’re able to easily obtain tourist visas to travel to California by applying online. Once they have a visa they land at LAX and start their crime spree.

Residents in one Camarillo neighborhood say they’re well aware of the South American burglary crews that have been targeting their community and the surrounding areas.

“Several of my friends have been hit repeatedly,” Camarillo resident John McGrath said... According to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, last year alone, they handled 100 cases involving crews from South America.

Of course California’s permissive politicians have enabled lots of homegrown criminals, too. Readers may recall Ms. Yu’s informative report last year in which she interviewed a local expert who memorably assessed the safety measures at a San Francisco supermarket:

I think that they’re not very good because I’ve personally been able to shoplift here with relative ease.

This column recently asked if San Francisco had become the most intolerant place in America given the city government’s bizarre refusal to do business with most U.S. states. A number of readers argued that city officials were in fact extremely tolerant because they have been permitting all manner of crimes and misdemeanors to be committed against the citizenry. This seems especially true when it comes to theft.  Continue Reading

Mayor London Breed is taking on San Francisco’s far left. Can she prevail?
Up for reelection in 2023, Breed received national attention when she didn’t mince words as she declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin district, beset by overdose deaths, open-air drug dealing, violence and homeless encampments.

“It’s time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end. And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement. More aggressive with the changes in our policies. And less tolerant of all the bull— that has destroyed our city,” she said in December.

In a break with liberals who have called for defunding law enforcement, Breed’s emergency declaration allowed her to quickly increase police budgets and bypass city bureaucracy to ramp up services to addicts and mentally ill people who are living on the streets. (About one out of every 100 residents of the city is homeless, according to data from the federal government.) The declaration just expired, and some question whether it had a tangible impact.

After a series of smash-and-grab robberies late last year at luxury stores in San Francisco and other cities in California, police presence in Union Square noticeably increased. An armed guard stands sentry at the entrance of a Louis Vuitton store that was looted, and Macy’s glass storefront remains partly covered with plywood.

Breed has repeatedly said that she is “unapologetic” and has rebuked white progressives such as Boudin — who is facing a June recall — as not understanding what it is like to be poor and a minority in San Francisco. latimes.com

Head of Minneapolis police oversight commission resigns, renewing criticism of city's civilian review
Abigail Cerra, chair of the Police Conduct Oversight Commission, said a combination of passivity and active resistance within the city made the work futile.

The head of the Minneapolis police oversight commission has resigned, expressing frustration with internal city politics and bureaucracy she said prevents the board from changing police practices. startribune.com

New York City can’t recover without the state reversing bail ‘reform’
It’s delusional to think that New York City will ever recover without restoring public safety, and that means undoing the disastrous legislation that continues to force judges to let dangerous repeat offenders right back onto the street.

29 people were shot in the Big Apple this past weekend alone. Though we’ve seemingly reached the end of the pandemic, most major crimes are still trending upward compared with two years ago.

The stats are not surprising. They are the result of several years of reckless, anti-police policies from the state and city governments. Albany’s bail reform turned our jails into revolving doors; judges can’t even consider how dangerous a criminal is. Elected officials have spewed anti-police rhetoric; our cops are demoralized, demonized and don’t even have qualified immunity anymore.

The result: New Yorkers are getting smeared with feces, stabbed or hit on the head with a hammer on their way to work.

Mayor Eric Adams is trying to turn the tide, but he can’t do it without state lawmakers fixing their mistakes. nypost.com

"We Don't Want Spring Break Here"
Miami Beach Announces Curfew After Spring Break Shootings
“We can’t endure this anymore, we just simply can’t,’’ said Mayor Dan Gelber. “This isn’t your father’s, your mother’s spring break. This is something totally different.”

Faced with an onslaught of spring break revelers, Miami Beach officials declared a state of emergency on Monday and announced a curfew for the city’s South Beach area after two shootings over the weekend that left five people wounded.

Mayor Dan Gelber said the shootings came during a period when “tens of thousands of people” descend upon the city, creating an unwanted “young party-hard crowd.”

“We can’t endure this anymore, we just simply can’t,” Mr. Gelber said, adding that 371 police officers had been deployed over the weekend. “This isn’t your father’s, your mother’s spring break. This is something totally different. We don’t ask for spring break, we don’t promote it, we don’t encourage it, we just endure it, and frankly it’s something we don’t want to endure.”

City commissioners will meet on Tuesday to finalize the curfew, which runs from 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m. this Thursday through Monday. The curfew applies to a specific area in South Beach with many bars and restaurants.

Since spring break began in mid-February, nine officers have been injured in various episodes, Chief Clements said, adding that 37 firearms had been confiscated over the last three days. He said there had been an increase in weapons seized, noting there had been 100 so far this year, compared with 85 by this time last year.

Last year, the city also adopted a state of emergency, enabling it to enact a curfew during spring break to try to diminish crowds.

“We haven’t been able to figure out how to stop spring break from coming,” Mr. Gelber said. “We don’t want spring break here, but they keep coming.” nytimes.com

Dangerous new form of gas theft on the rise as prices surge

US: 81.4M Cases - 998.8K Dead - 63.2M Recovered
Worldwide: 472.7M Cases - 6.1M Dead - 409.1M Recovered

Former Senior Loss Prevention Executive
Know of any fallen LP exec? Let's remember & recognize.

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 354  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 728
*Red indicates change in total deaths

Is America Ready for Another COVID Surge?
How the next pandemic surge will be different

The same: The brutal math of exponential growth. Different: Our pandemic fatigue is worse than ever.

It’s an uneasy time. On one hand, it’s likely the worst of the pandemic is over, at least in terms of severe illness and death. But on the other hand, we have to ask: Do these upticks in the rest of the world foreshadow America’s future?

It’s true that the US often sees cases rise several weeks after they tick upward in the United Kingdom. We are again watching a new(ish) variant, BA.2, trace a familiarly steep curve on graphs tracking new cases, provoking a familiar but chronically contentious question: What should we do about it, as individuals and as a society?

While this moment feels familiar in many ways, several factors set it apart from previous pandemic lulls. Collectively, we have more immunity, and more treatments, than ever before. At the same time, we’re more fatigued about the state of the pandemic and arguably less prepared for a wave, considering there’s more confusion than ever about what our individual risk is at any place and time. vox.com

Restaurant Customers Are Returning
Eating at a restaurant roars back from the COVID-19 pandemic: survey
The survey found a COVID-era record 74% of people say they are comfortable eating at a restaurant, above the prior high of 70% last summer. "We believe much of this increase is due to the recent 94% reduction in COVID cases in the U.S.

Importantly, COVID fatigue also seems to be impacting comfort levels — comfort is higher than at any point in time since the start of the pandemic despite cases being 2-3x higher than summer 2021 and vaccine efficacy being lower than in the past," explained the survey's author and analyst David Palmer. finance.yahoo.com

Retail COVID Layoffs
Judge Says COVID-19 Justified Short-Notice Art Van Layoffs
Delaware bankruptcy judge on Monday dismissed claims that bankrupt home furnishing retailer Art Van Furniture broke federal law when it laid off 700 workers with nearly no notice

Biden pushes new normal amid worries about next covid surge