The D&D Daily's Gus Downing Discusses ORC Trends
Organized retail crime strikes Suffolk County, New York
Organized retail crime, a nationwide retail theft phenomenon, has reached Suffolk County.

Last week, four individuals from Newark, New Jersey, were arrested by the Suffolk County Police Department for their alleged involvement in an ORC ring that stole $94,000 worth of luxury handbags from a Balenciaga store in East Hampton on March 3. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney (R) held a press conference shortly after the arrests were made, announcing that those responsible for the theft will be prosecuted.

ORC refers to the coordinated shoplifting carried out by professional theft rings.

Gus Downing is publisher and editor of The D&D Daily, an online publication that follows retail trends and raises public awareness for these issues. According to him, ORC has proliferated in recent years due to the rise of the online resale marketplace.

“Organized retail crime has been around a long time, but the internet and third-party selling online is really what took this into the stratosphere,” he said in a phone interview. “When you look at the internet and third-party sellers, and then you tack on the opioid epidemic and the cartels flooding the United States with fentanyl, and then you tack on the surge in crime generically, you’ve got a heck of a problem that is spiraling out of control.”

Downing said that a considerable proportion of mainstream opioid users require a revenue stream to finance their habit. According to him, ORC and drugs are inextricably linked together.

“It’s really all about drugs,” he said. “That’s what drives a person into a store to steal. They have to get the money, and what’s the easiest place to get it when you have millions of people online that would love a deal?”  Continue Reading Full Article

Prop 47 Repeal Effort Blocked - Again
California lawmakers stop another effort to reform Proposition 47

A measure that would have lowered California’s threshold for felony theft from $950 to $400 failed to make it out of a committee in the State Legislature

Assembly Bill 1603, introduced by Assemblymember Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, aimed to reform Proposition 47, a 2014 voter-approved measure that reclassified certain low-level drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.

Under Proposition 47, property theft under $950 is a petty theft misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in prison and fines. Salas’ bill would have lowered that threshold to $400 – back to the amount it was before voters approved Proposition 47. The bill failed to pass the Assembly Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.

Salas’ proposal came after a series of smash-and-grab robberies were reported throughout the state, leaving critics of Proposition 47 claiming that California’s existing statutes failed to hold individuals accountable for theft.

Before Tuesday’s vote, Salas said business owners across the state have anecdotally seen an increase in theft since Proposition 47 passed, sharing that businesses are seeing people coming in and stealing “because they know there’s no real repercussions.”

The bill was also opposed by Assemblymember Reginald Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, chair of the Public Safety Committee, who said Tuesday that lowering the threshold could lead to a rise in the state’s prison population.

The bill’s failure is the second time in recent weeks that the Public Safety Committee declined to advance a measure that would make changes to Proposition 47. The committee killed a bill by Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, earlier this month that would have repealed Proposition 47. thecentersquare.com

Summer of Deadly Violence is on the Horizon
‘We Can’t Endure This’: Surge in U.S. Shootings Shows No Sign of Easing

A deadly weekend was an ominous harbinger for the summer months ahead, which is typically America’s most violent time.

All told, in a single weekend when the calendar turned to spring, there were at least nine mass shooting events — defined by at least four people shot — across the country, as well as many more with fewer victims. It was an ominous harbinger for the warmer summer months ahead, which is typically America’s most violent time.

The surge in gun violence in the United States that began in 2020 as the pandemic set in and continued through a summer of unrest following the murder of George Floyd, shows no sign of easing. Homicides were up 30 percent that year, the largest annual recorded increase.

While in most places gun violence has not reached the record levels of the 1990s, and other types of crime have remained low during the pandemic, the continued drumbeat of shootings has forced officials like those in Miami Beach to take extraordinary measures at a time when gun ownership has soared, and as some states have moved to pass laws to allow easier access to firearms.

“When picnics and outside events like this car show, when all that happens that’s a kickoff” to a period of violence, said Mark Bryant, the founder of the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that collects data on shootings. “And I’m just afraid the kickoff was this weekend.”

Mayor Eric Adams, who took office at the start of the year after campaigning on a message of public safety, has focused on the prevalence of firearms on city streets, attempting to curtail their spread through legislative and policing changes. He has repeatedly asked the courts and state lawmakers to treat weapon offenses with harsher penalties, calling for decreasing the minimum age that someone can be charged as an adult in certain situations and for revising the state’s 2020 bail reform laws. nytimes.com

The Return of 'Broken Windows' Crime Policies to NYC
NYPD revives ‘broken windows’ policies as Adams fumes over weekend shootings
Mayor Eric Adams called police brass on the carpet over the two dozen shooting incidents that took place this past weekend — sparking the NYPD to scramble to get more cops on the streets in a revival of some “broken windows” policies, The Post has learned.

Adams summoned Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Chief of Department Kenneth Corey to City Hall on Tuesday to answer for the surge in bloodshed that left 29 people wounded ahead of his planned news conference on the NYPD’s new anti-gun units, law-enforcement sources said Wednesday.

Behind closed doors, Adams — a former NYPD captain — fumed that the department wasn’t doing enough. During the meeting, Corey spoke with a sense of urgency in his voice as he ordered to the 100-plus supervisors to stop the bleeding by putting extra cops on patrol, sources said.

In addition, local “neighborhood coordination officers” will be shifted from helping detectives investigate unsolved crimes to enforcing quality-of-life offenses, including littering and fare evasion, sources said.

Those moves mark a return to the zero-tolerance, “broken windows” policing strategies that were widely credited with reducing crime in the Big Apple during the 1990s. The redeployments of the NCOs and YCOs will put more than 500 cops on the streets for at least part of their shifts, sources said. nypost.com

LA Crime: Armed Robberies Up 60% - Homicides Up 50%
How bad is crime in L.A.? Here are the numbers behind the mayoral race rhetoric
Crime was one of the big issues discussed Tuesday during a debate by the top candidates running for mayor of Los Angeles.

While many of the candidates talked about an uptick in crime, billionaire businessman Rick Caruso gave a particularly dark view of public safety: “Everybody in this city — at every corner of the city, no matter where you live, what your background is — is scared to walk out their doors."

So what is the truth about crime in L.A.? While crime has ticked up, violent crime is nowhere near its peak of the 1990s. Homicides in Los Angeles hit 397 in 2021, the most in more than a decade and a 50% increase from 2019 — but well short of the 1,000 deaths reached during years in the 1990s.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore told the civilian Police Commission on Tuesday that robberies involving firearms were up 57% from 2020 and 60% from 2019 — with hundreds more incidents so far this year than last.

Through the middle of March, property crime was up more than 5% over last year, with car thefts again a major concern. Compared to this point in 2020, vehicle thefts are up nearly 44%. latimes.com

Honolulu: Recent crime wave has community increasing security

Hamden, Connecticut shopping center riddled with crime

US: 81.5M Cases - 1M Dead - 63.6M Recovered
Worldwide: 476.6M Cases - 6.1M Dead - 412M 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: 732
*Red indicates change in total deaths

COVID Cases Down in All U.S. Regions - But for How Long?

Deltacron COVID Wave Coming?
Fourth Covid wave? US-based epidemiologist warns about Deltacron driven surge
As state authorities are scaling down the pandemic by taking back restrictions and allowing free movement, a US-based epidemiologist has lashed out at making it look like the pandemic is coming to an end. Dr Eric Feigl-Ding has warned the world that it is at the brink of yet another wave.

America has recently closed several testing centers, the UK has taken back travel restrictions for foreign travelers. Other countries too are easing measures to open economy. Australia, known for its strictest restrictions too has been consulting health panels to relax quarantine rules for closed contacts.

Dr. Ding’s warning comes a day after another hybrid variant of SARS-CoV-2, a recombinant of Delta and omicron called the Deltacron was detected across Europe and the US. The health economist predicts that the US is just weeks behind the Europe that has witnessed the Deltacron surge. financialexpress.com

COVID's Historic Death Toll
Census Bureau: COVID drove largest spike in U.S. deaths in a century
COVID-19 drove the largest death spike in a century, with 535,000 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019, according to newly released U.S. Census Bureau data.

Why it matters: The new data shows how profoundly the pandemic has impacted the U.S. population, as Americans died or fled cities for the sanctuary of cheaper or less populous areas.

By the numbers: There was a 19% jump in the number of U.S. deaths between 2019 and 2020. Before then, the largest increase of the decade had been just 3.3% in 2015. The U.S. death toll remained high in 2021, according to the latest provisional data for the year, and the pandemic has disrupted what were once predictable, seasonal mortality trends.

The overall rise in mortality contributed to deaths outpacing births in more than 73% of U.S. counties between mid-2020 and mid-2021 — a record high and up from 56% the year before and 46% in 2019. axios.com

COVID's Impact on Work Will Be Permanent
Remote vs. On-site Work: What Do Employees Prefer as COVID Subsides?
The number of COVID-19 cases continues to decline in the United States — at least this week — but the pandemic’s impact on work life appears to be entrenched in the minds of many Americans. That’s especially true of remote work, which most employees want to keep doing even after COVID is no longer a major health threat, according to a new survey from Willis Towers Watson.

The WTW survey of more than 9,600 U.S. employees, conducted during December 2021 and January 2022 and released last week, found that 58% of respondents want to work remotely either most of the time (36%) or in a hybrid arrangement (22%) that splits time between remote and on-site work. Only 42% would rather work on-site all the time.

That’s the case even though employees have had varying experiences working remotely. About 70% of employees said working remotely helped them achieve a better work/life balance, while nearly two-thirds (65%) said their job performances were evaluated fairly. However, more than half (52%) said working remotely left them feeling disconnected from their teams, and 44% said they are worried that working remotely will negatively affect their careers.

The key advantages of working remotely were split between those who cited less time commuting (44%), those who saved money by not having to go on-site (37%), and those who were able to better manage household commitments by working from home (33%). gobankingrates.com

Store Shortages Worse Now Than at COVID's Peak?
Grocery Shoppers Are Complaining That Shortages Are At An All-Time High
Inflation is reaching new heights each month and rising grocery store costs are forcing shoppers to make some changes. But this isn't the only hurdle they are facing at the moment—nearly three-fourths of shoppers say that out-of-stocks are worse now compared to two years ago.

With continued supply chain problems, the conflict in Ukraine, droughts, and staffing shortages, it is no secret that shelves at supermarkets aren't back to what they looked like before March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic started. But new data published by Retail Insight published on March 21 shows that not only do 71% of the 1,000+ shoppers surveyed think there are more shortages than ever, but 61% think online stock is worse, too.

The latest reports say that milk, canned goods, cream cheese, pasta, and a few others are the items that are the hardest to find at grocery stores. While 66% of survey respondents believe better pay and working conditions for warehouse and store employees would help, instances around the world are only adding to the problems. eatthis.com

Report shows consumers returning to normal on foodservice and retail

A tale of two Covid Americas: can the US unite behind a pandemic strategy?

Sources: NYC Mayor to roll back private-sector vaccine mandate for pro athletes

Walmart vs. BJ's: Self-Checkout Lawsuit
Walmart sues BJ’s Wholesale claiming it stole self-checkout technology

In the lawsuit, Walmart claims BJ’s launched a self-checkout feature in its mobile app that’s nearly identical to Sam’s Club’s Scan & Go.

Walmart and its big-box warehouse subsidiary Sam’s Club accused rival retailer BJ’s Wholesale Club in a lawsuit filed Tuesday of stealing technology that powers a popular self-checkout option in the Sam’s Club mobile app.

The suit, filed in federal court, claims Walmart worked for years to develop Scan & Go, a feature that lets Sam’s Club customers ring up purchases on their smartphones while walking through the store, allowing them to avoid a checkout line.

It also notes that Walmart holds multiple patents protecting the intellectual property for the self-checkout feature, which debuted in 2016. Scan & Go has become more popular since the Covid-19 pandemic began in the U.S. in early 2020 as shoppers adopted social distancing and contactless checkout.

Walmart alleges its “innovations were simply taken without permission” by BJ’s, which launched its contactless offering, ExpressPay, in late 2021. “Express Pay is an apparent copy of Sam’s Club’s Scan & Go, merely changing the in-app colors and changing the name from Scan & Go to Express Pay,” the lawsuit says.

As a result, the suit claims, BJ’s has infringed on Walmart’s patent rights, causing “significant damages and irreparable harm.” cnbc.com

NRF's Top 50 Global Retailers
A look at the 2022 Top 50 Global Retailers

Stalwart leader Walmart remains, though value retailers like Amazon, Schwarz Group, Aldi and Costco are tapping into new markets

The second year of the global pandemic challenged global retail in 2021 as it did in 2020. And, just as in 2020, global retail emerged with far more revenue and profit as it managed changes in shopper needs and routines.

Extreme lockdowns still occurred but were more of the exception in most countries even with the onset of the delta and omicron variants. Nations chose to live with COVID-19 as they backed aggressive vaccination programs and encouraged widespread mask use.

Walmart continues to be the world’s largest retailer, both domestically and internationally, with a significant commitment to a new online marketplace and fulfillment model. But it faces challenges within the Top 10 from Amazon, Schwarz Group, Aldi and Costco, all of which are tapping into new markets for value shopping. Major Chinese online retailer Alibaba is still among the Top 50 but regulatory changes in its home market have limited its advantages in financial technology. nrf.com

Click here to view the full list

Hundreds of Companies Ditch Russia
Over 450 Companies Have Withdrawn from Russia—But Some Remain
Since the invasion of Ukraine began, over 450 companies have announced their withdrawal from Russia—but some companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred. When this list was first published the week of February 28, only several dozen companies had announced their departure.

Originally conceptualized as a simple "withdraw" vs. "remain" list, our new list of companies now consists of five categories:

1) WITHDRAWAL - Clean Break: companies completely halting Russian engagements/exiting Russia;

2) SUSPENSION - Keeping Options Open for Return: companies temporarily curtailing operations while keeping return options open;

3) SCALING BACK - Reducing Activities: companies scaling back some business operations while continuing others;

4) BUYING TIME - Holding Off New Investments/Developments: companies postponing future planned investment/development/marketing while continuing substantive business;

5) DIGGING IN - Defying Demands for Exit: companies defying demands for exit/reduction of activities

See the full list here