Interface "Ask Our Expert" video series

What is POS Exception Reporting?

Jim Mack, VP Products and Solutions, Interface Security Systems, explains how Point of Sale (POS) Exception Reporting solutions can help retail chains and restaurants identify internal theft and opportunities to train employees. He also talks about how the ROI from POS exception reporting can be further improved when integrated with security cameras. 

To learn more about POS exception reporting, please visit https://interfacesystems.com/business-intelligence/pos-exception-reporting/
 

Lawmakers Criticize DOJ for 'Turning Blind Eye' to Retail Theft
Republicans urge Attorney General to crackdown on retail crime
Linking retail crime to organized crime and denouncing it as exploding across American cities, 16 Republican representatives wrote to United States Attorney General Merrick Garland this week, demanding a national strategy and fight against both.

“One of the essential functions of our government is to provide security to all citizens,” U.S. Rep. Ken Buck (CO), one of the letter’s co-signers, said separately. “Yet despite the continued increase in retail crime, the DOJ has turned a blind eye and refused to act. I urge Attorney General Garland to develop a strategy to reduce retail crime, maintain the rule of law, and protect our civil liberties.”

The lawmakers cited news reports that retailers have faced around $45 billion in annual losses, despite efforts from state and local authorities. Likewise, last year, a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey determined that 65 percent of respondents indicated that theft was coming more from gangs, who were consequently showcasing more violence and aggression than in previous years. Still, that same report also noted that 18 percent of respondents saw the opposite: a reduction in threats from a year earlier. Further, a third of respondents said that employee theft was down, with similar figures reported for shoplifting.

The lawmakers’ letter also pointed to the rise of online commerce platforms as a major driver of modern theft, causing multijurisdictional hassles that often cross state lines and causing a unique challenge for local authorities.

“Building on other Members drawing attention to this issue and the success of Operation Booster Buster, I urge the Justice Department to take action and develop a national strategy to address the alarming rise in organized retail crime,” the lawmakers wrote.

Operation Booster Buster was a joint sting effort from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, Tulsa Police Department, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and IRS Criminal Investigation, targeting retail theft. homelandprepnews.com

Shoplifting Is Becoming More Violent & Aggressive
Retail theft on the rise & shoplifters are becoming more aggressive, CMPD says
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said that some criminals are shoplifting as a way to make a living. The agencies’ detectives said they are cracking down on organized theft rings. CMPD said suspects often sell stolen goods from places like Lowe’s, Home Depot and Walmart on social media sites, including Facebook Marketplace.

So far this year, CMPD said its Organized Retail Theft Task Force has investigated more than two dozen cases. In one recent joint operation with the Cabarrus County Sheriff’s Office, CMPD said authorities caught a 33-year-old man accused of stealing more than $250,000 in power tools from retail stores across the Carolinas.

The man, Steven Vanderburg, and several other co-conspirators connected to the thefts, were arrested in the investigation, CMPD said. About $82,000 in cash, approximately $50,000 in new tools and three vehicles were seized by police. CMPD officers warned many of the alleged shoplifters are becoming more violent.

Last month, police say a shoplifting suspect assaulted a security guard at a south Charlotte Lowe’s store. The guard then chased the suspects and shot at them. She has since been charged with shooting into an occupied vehicle. CMPD said it was checking to see if any of the recent investigations were connected to that theft ring. Many of the suspects are career criminals, police say.

“I’m all about giving second chances to people, but after 87 times, that becomes a career criminal,” CMPD Detective Anthony Finocchio said. “How are they out still victimizing individuals and the retailers and all the other crimes that are occurring?” yahoo.com

Another State Proposes ORC Law
Minnesota bill aims to deter organized retail theft

One lawmaker wants Minnesota to join 34 other states that have statutes criminalizing organized retail crime.

Senate Bill 3487 aims to establish the crime of organized theft, which is when a person or a group coordinates looting merchandise from a retailer to resell or return to the retailer.

“This bill will have an important impact on distinguishing between common petty shoplifting and organized crime,” Limmer said. “My hope is that this bill will provide prosecutors and law enforcement an updated tool to help address the theft going on at retailers of all sizes across Minnesota.”

In addition, receiving stolen retail merchandise with intent to resell and possessing shoplifting-related devices with the intent to shoplift would be violations.

This bill seeks enhanced penalties for violations that create a reasonably foreseeable risk of bodily harm to others and allows aggregation of the value of retail merchandise stolen in six months for charging purposes.

The Minnesota Retailers Association and the Minnesota Organized Retail Crime Association support the bill. kpvi.com

Using Tech to Reduce Crime by 42%
South Fulton using technology-driven policing to reduce crime

Chief says CompStat helps department know where to put its manpower

While many cities across the nation are grappling with skyrocketing crime rates, one city in metro Atlanta is enjoying a three-year run during which its crime numbers have plunged more than 40%.

South Fulton recently announced a 17% drop in serious crime in 2021. It was the third year in a row the city has seen a double-digit drop, according to police statistics.

The city’s serious crime rate, which includes murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies and auto theft, fell 16% in 2019 and dropped another 17% in 2020. Since 2018, the year the police department was established, South Fulton has seen an overall 41.5% reduction, according to statistics.

Officials in South Fulton’s police department attribute the success to the use of “CompStat,” a metrics system introduced by the New York Police Department in 1994 that relies heavily on statistics. The computerized model became a cornerstone of the Big Apple’s drastic decline in crime in the 1990s.

New tools for police

The way it works in South Fulton is an officer crunches the crime stats and gathers analytics each week, looking for trends in criminal activity that police can use to anticipate patterns. The officer puts together a weekly CompStat report on calls and results that allows command staff to track details like the time of day, day of the week and street address where incidents occur.

The data is shown on maps to illustrate hot spots and peak times, which police leaders discuss in weekly meetings. They use the intel to deploy manpower for the week. Many law enforcement agencies around the nation have adopted the process. ajc.com

Comparing Progressive DA Crime Policies
Is San Francisco's Chesa Boudin really the most 'radical' DA in America?
San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin is lumped in with a cohort that includes George Gascón in Los Angeles, Kim Foxx in Chicago and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, a group called the “Soros-funded DAs” by critics.

But is Boudin really more radical than the other three? SFGATE dug into the policy records of each of the four district attorneys and found that while the four are quite similar, subtle differences do exist.

Chesa Boudin - Chesa Boudin took office in January 2020, and his primary policy initiatives have been eliminating cash bail and reducing the city's prison population. He has sought to achieve the latter goal by diverting more offenders to mental health and substance abuse programs instead of pursuing convictions and incarceration. An analysis from the San Francisco Chronicle found that Boudin has increased diversion rates for assault, robbery and drug cases and decreased convictions of the same crimes.

George Gascón - San Francisco's recent trend of increased diversion rates and lower conviction rates began under George Gascón, who served as San Francisco's district attorney between 2011 from 2019 before taking the same position in Los Angeles in 2020.

Kim Foxx - A Chicago Tribune analysis showed that Foxx is dropping felony charges at a higher rate than her predecessor, and that unlike Boudin, Foxx is pursuing conviction for violent crimes such as murder and aggravated battery less frequently than her predecessor did. It's worth noting that generally, district attorney charging rates in Cook County are higher than they are in San Francisco, so Foxx's office dropping more violent crime charges than her predecessor does not necessarily mean she's "softer on violent crime" than Boudin is.

Larry Krasner - Krasner assumed office as district attorney of Philadelphia in January 2018, and like Boudin, Gascón and Foxx, has sought to reduce his jurisdiction's jail population by pursuing diversion and shorter sentences. On several policy areas, however, Krasner contrasts from all three DAs. Krasner campaigned on abolishing cash bail, and while he is now requiring cash bail in very few cases, he technically has not ended the practice, putting him closer in line with Gascon than Boudin. chron.com

Where is Crime & Violence Surging Most? Not California & New York
California & New York under fire for soaring crime - but southern states have highest murder rates in the country
Republicans have repeatedly blamed progressive policies in big cities for a rise in murder rates during the pandemic. But the cities and states that get the most crime coverage - namely California and New York - aren't actually the places where violence is surging the most, according to data from Third Way.

Critics have repeatedly pointed to Democrats' supposed "soft-on-crime" approach, bail reform laws, and "defund the police" rhetoric from left-wing activists for fueling a surge in violent crime. But the Third Way report shows that the highest murder rates were found in states like Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina and Arkansas.

Mississippi had by far the highest murder rate at 20.5 murders per 100,000 residents, followed by Louisiana at 15.79. Alabama, Kentucky and Missouri all had murder rates higher than 14 per 100,000 compared to a national average of 6.5.

New York's rate was 4.11 murders per 100,000 residents and California's was 5.59. According to the study, Mississippi's murder rate was 400% higher than New York's and 250% higher than California's. salon.com

This Database Stores the DNA of 31,000 New Yorkers. Is It Illegal?
A database used by the New York Police Department violates state law and the Constitution, the Legal Aid Society contends in a lawsuit.

US: 81.5M Cases - 1M Dead - 63.8M Recovered
Worldwide: 478.3M Cases - 6.1M Dead - 413.2M 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: 737
*Red indicates change in total deaths

Will the U.S. Avoid Another Wave?
COVID cases fall by 22% as Europe Surges
New COVID cases continue to fall across the U.S., even as a new version of Omicron spreads quickly in other parts of the world. Nationwide, the U.S. is now averaging roughly 29,000 new COVID cases per day — a 22% drop over the past two weeks.

Kansas and Nebraska have the lowest case rates in the country, each with an average of just two new cases per 100,000 people. Case rates were highest in Kentucky and Alaska. Deaths have dropped to an average of roughly 1,000 a day, down 26% from more than 1,300 deaths a day two weeks ago.

What we're watching: Europe is experiencing a new wave, driven by a highly contagious Omicron subvariant, but many experts say the U.S. probably won't get hit as hard. "I don't really see, unless something changes dramatically, that there will be a major surge," NIAID director Anthony Fauci told the Washington Post Tuesday. axios.com

Fallout from Retail Exec's Resignation Over COVID Views
She Was a Candidate to Lead Levi’s. Then She Started Tweeting.
Before 2020, Jennifer Sey, a top executive at Levi Strauss & Company and a leading candidate to be the company’s next leader, barely used social media. Two years later, Ms. Sey was out of a job, in part, in her telling, because of her activity on Twitter.

Ms. Sey’s unusual exit last month from Levi’s after more than 20 years generated a flurry of headlines, with her claiming in a widely circulated essay that her advocacy for school reopenings during the pandemic made her a pariah at work and ultimately led to her ouster. The vast majority of Ms. Sey’s tweets were about schools, but some of them criticized guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, whom she accused of fear mongering.

She also expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of masking, mostly for young children. (“Currently there is not enough evidence for or against the use of masks (medical or other) for healthy individuals in the wider community,” she posted in May 2020.)

Ms. Sey’s outspokenness drew criticism both inside and outside the company, including threats of boycotts. The tweets came when Levi’s was using public health guidance to manage protocols across hundreds of stores and in distribution centers. But Ms. Sey said she was speaking as a concerned mother, not a corporate executive. She also noted that Levi’s had not previously complained when she posted on social media in support of Democratic politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren or more liberal causes.

Levi’s disputes Ms. Sey’s account of events, including her claims that she was punished because her views veered from “left-leaning orthodoxy” and that she walked away from a $1 million severance package in order to be able speak freely about the company. Levi’s said Ms. Sey had quit rather than negotiate an exit package, which would have contained a nondisclosure agreement. It “would not contain a prohibition on the executive speaking out about matters of public interest such as school closures or on engaging in any legally protected speech,” Kelly McGinnis, the senior vice president of corporate affairs at Levi’s, said in a statement. nytimes.com

Vax Mandate for Cops Remains Active
NYC police union heads feel snubbed by lifting of vax mandate for athletes
New York police union leaders were left fuming after reports that the city would ease its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for unvaxxed athletes, a move one labor head said would be “hypocritical.”

Mayor Eric Adams is expected to announce Thursday a reversal of his private-sector policy so that anti-vaccine stars like the Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving can compete at home, and big time musicians and performers can play in Big Apple venues.

But labor leaders took the move as a slight on the city’s cops and other workers, many of whom have ended up axed because they refused to get jabbed.

“I’m not surprised,” Lou Turco, president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, told The Post. “To me it’s hypocritical that you’re allowing an athlete not to get vaccinated but you’re going to force officers to get vaccinated to keep their jobs.”

Paul DiGiacomo, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, said Adams “must be kidding” with the change. “Talented detectives with irreplaceable experience were lost because of the mandate,” DiGiacomo said. “Athletes and performers more important during a crime wave than NYPD detectives?” nypost.com

Retail's Return to Normal Continues
Build-A-Bear Parties Return Following Two-Year COVID-19 Hiatus
Build-A-Bear Workshop is celebrating the return of in-store parties, which were shut down for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. The retailer, which announced last year that it was upgrading its ecommerce experience, has another reason to celebrate this year: its 25th anniversary.

“Our 25th Anniversary year is the perfect time to celebrate at Build-A-Bear and we are thrilled to be re-launching parties in Workshop locations around the world after a two-year hiatus,” said Sharon Price John, President and CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop in a statement.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Build-A-Bear announced that more than 90% of its workforce would be placed on unpaid leave while the employees’ medical, dental and vision benefits remained available. Most workers who were not furloughed saw pay cuts, while executive officers’ base pay was cut by 20%. Non-employee board director cash compensation was eliminated for Q1 2020. retailtouchpoints.com

UK retail sales fall in February as Covid restrictions ease
UK retail sales fell by 0.3% in Feb. as online sales fell and stormy weather deterred shoppers.

NPD: Restaurant traffic rises year-over-year as COVID fades

Poland abolishing practically all COVID-19 restrictions