NRF PROTECT to Feature Leading Security Experts

June 5-7, 2023 | Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, TX

NRF PROTECT 2023 will bring together retail industry leaders and security experts June 5-7 at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas. The three-day conference will convene retail professionals from the loss prevention, asset protection, cybersecurity and digital fraud communities to discuss and collaborate on specific security threats, including organized retail crime, with the latest tactics and technologies.

Featured speakers include:

• Adrian Beck, emeritus professor, University of Leicester
• Sherri Davidoff, founder and CEO, LMG Security
• Scott Draher, vice president of asset protection and safety, Lowe’s Companies Inc.
• Chris Hackler, vice president of global asset protection, Signet Jewelers
• Amy Herman, president, The Art of Perception
• Jodie Kautt, vice president of cybersecurity, Target
• Nitin Natarajan, deputy director of CISA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

See a full list of speakers here.


Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP) to Reduce Emergency Response Time, Increase Dispatch Accuracy in Fairfax County, VA

ASAP can reduce emergency response time from minutes to seconds for monitored alarm users, including thousands of Vector Security customers.

PITTSBURGH, April 6, 2023 – Fairfax County, Virginia becomes the 125th Emergency Communication Center (ECC) in the nation to implement Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP), resulting in faster, more accurate emergency response by delivering alarm notification information directly from alarm monitoring centers to ECCs via computer rather than by phone.

Read more here
 

RLPSA 2023: That's a wrap!

By Amber Bradley, Executive Director, RLPSA

As the sun set on the final day of the 43rd annual Restaurant Loss Prevention and Security Association (RLPSA) Conference in Denver, attendees were abuzz with newfound knowledge and strategies to take back to their organizations. Today's sessions were nothing short of game-changing, arming industry professionals with valuable tools and insights for enhancing loss prevention, risk management, and safety in their restaurants.

The day began with a powerful session on how to deal with homeless people in restaurants. Participants learned the importance of compassionate rule enforcement and gained practical conflict prevention techniques to add to their tool chest. This session emphasized the critical role empathy can play in the restaurant industry and highlighted the potential for creative problem-solving when emotions are taken into account.

Later, an impactful session with Chief Johnny Jennings of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department solidified the value of transforming organizations into customer-focused cultures. Attendees walked away with a wealth of knowledge and actionable strategies to elevate their businesses through exceptional customer experiences while maintaining safety and security.

General Session wrapped-up with the attendee favorite "ON the 20" session, sponsored by Altronix, featuring lively discussions led by Jason Swanson (MOD Pizza) and Dan Moren (Starbucks). The CHALLENGE: ACCEPTED! theme encouraged participants to share their key takeaways and commitment to implementing innovative solutions learned throughout the event.

The conference concluded with the ever-popular franchise focus sessions, where participants got the opportunity to dig into the specific challenges faced by their own businesses and collaborate with other professionals to identify best practices and develop targeted strategies.

As attendees leave the Rocky Mountains behind and return to their important roles in the restaurant industry, they will undoubtedly walk away from this year’s RLPSA conference with an arsenal of tools and knowledge to make a lasting positive impact on their organizations. Here's to another successful year of learning, growing, and innovating within the loss prevention, risk, and safety landscape!

See you next year in Vegas!
 

When violent customers threaten retailers at home

How a retailer's face matching led to CEO stalker ID, advance warning

Angry, violent customers abuse, curse, and threaten retail employees every day. Sometimes they follow through on those threats: Criminals killed 582 retail customers, employees, and security personnel last year, according to industry publication D&D Daily. Retail executives face different kinds of threats from angry, violent customers. Sometimes, trouble even follows the CEO all the way home.

In response to threats both in-store and out, retailers are quickly adopting technologies, including face matching, that offer advance warning when seconds count. Not all violence is preventable, but retailers can increase their chances of stopping attacks before they start. Here's how one retailer's fast, proactive reaction to a real-life threat led to vital evidence and enhanced situational awareness at work and at home.

Here's how it started: An angry man called the retailer's customer service hotline. The caller gave the rep his name and phone number, and he complained of in-store ADA violations. Just before ending the call, the man told the rep: "I am sitting in front of [CEO's] home, and I will take care of this myself." The caller had the CEO's correct home address. Click.

When police responded to the CEO's home, they found no one outside, but they and the retailer asset protection team treated the threat as credible. They worked together to learn more.

The client AP team provided the name given by the hotline caller. The police ran the name and found an old arrest photo. They confirmed the man pictured had a long history of violence and threats, plus open arrest warrants.

Next, the retailer's AP team put the arrest photo into their custom FaceFirst system, then ran a search. Although the arrest photo had been taken 15 years before, the system instantly matched the image with a man who had been in the retailer's stores within the prior 30 days. That search yielded a better, current photo of the man presumed to be the caller. Investigators developed more evidence that led to the retailer securing an order of protection for the man. So far, the man has not returned to the retailer's stores. If he does return, the retailer's FaceFirst system is set to provide real-time notification and enable a fast response by the retailer and local law enforcement.

Calculate the risks of being caught unaware when a known offender enters your store. Or the risks of not having the tools to investigate and validate direct threats against you. If you knew there was a proven solution to keep your valued customers, associates, and executive team safer from violent offenders, would you implement it? The real risk is answering no. FaceFirst's solution is fast, accurate, and scalable-take action today at facefirst.com.
 

Research: Facial Recognition is an Accurate & Effective Crime-Fighting Tool
Facial recognition accuracy continues to be validated as use cases explode globally

Statement on release of research into Facial Recognition technology

We will use Facial Recognition Technology as a first, but significant, step towards precise community-based crime fighting.

Lindsey Chiswick, Director of Intelligence for the Met said: “Live Facial Recognition technology is a precise community crime fighting tool. Led by intelligence, we place our effort where it is likely to have the greatest effect. It enables us to be more focused in our approach to tackle crime, including robbery and violence against women and girls."

Today independent ground-breaking research into the Met’s deployment of facial recognition has been published by The National Physical Laboratory. The study, ‘Facial Recognition Technology in Law Enforcement’ tested the accuracy, in operational conditions, of the algorithm used by the Met in terms of different demographics.

We now better understand the demographic performance of our LFR system. At the setting we have been using it, there is no statistically significant bias in relation to race and gender and the chance of a false match is just 1 in 6000 people who pass the camera.

The findings conclude:

• There are settings our algorithm can be operated at where there is no statistical significance between demographic performance.

• ACCURACY: When used at a threshold setting of 0.6 or above, correct matches (True Positive Identification Rate) were 89%. The incorrect match rate (False Positive Identification Rate) was 0.017%. The chance of a false match therefore, is just 1 in 6000 people walking past the camera.

• DEMOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCE: When used at a threshold setting of 0.6 or above, any differences in matches across groups were not statistically significant. This means performance was the same across race and gender.

• Retrospective Facial Recognition: The true positive identification rate for high quality images was 100%. This is the best performance possible. news.met.police.uk


U.S. Grocers Push for Passage of 'Combating Organized Retail Crime Act'
The organized retail crime bill that grocers should be watching

Proposed bicameral legislation aims to make theft a nationally recognized issue and unify the country’s disjointed efforts to combat a problem that has plagued companies.

Efforts to battle organized retail crime (ORC) have expanded from the sales floors to the floors of the House of Representatives and the Senate with the recent introduction of the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023.

This proposed bipartisan and bicameral legislation debuted earlier this year and aims to bolster federal response to ORC, mainly by creating a Center to Combat Organized Retail Crime within Homeland Security. A new tool will also be established that will help in federal investigations and prosecutions of ORC as well as assist in recovering lost goods and proceeds.

While the legislation has only just been referred to House and Senate committees, as confirmed by the bill’s sponsors in each branch, it has already gained support from at least nine organizations, including the National Retail Federation (NRF), Retail Industry Leaders Association and ICSC to name a few.

Justice for retailers

While ORC is a retail-wide issue, grocers are especially vulnerable due to their accessibility and variety of products. To minimize these threats, more grocers are hiring ORC investigators, whose job it is to work with local law enforcement and prosecution, help stores deter ORC thieves and identify ORC patterns. Grocers are also implementing state-of-the-art security measures to deter ORC criminals.

These efforts, according to experts, are proving effective thus far.

But while ORC investigators are a part of the prosecution process, 60% of grocers say lack of prosecution and adjudication is an area of further opportunity they plan on expanding into this year, per the 2023 Asset Protection in Food Retail report by the Food Industry Association, which also endorsed the bill.

If the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023 is not passed, Pollack added, it will be up to grocers as well as the broader retail industry to continue localized efforts to stop ORC thefts.

She also said merchants and grocers should contact members of Congress directly to show support for the bill, as the process for its approval is not fast-paced.

The need for federal legislation: grocerydive.com


Philadelphia DA's Theft Blame Game

Progressive DA Asks for Money to Fight Retail Theft Surge
Krasner asks council for additional $7M to tackle rise in retail theft & carjackings

DA Larry Krasner pointed the finger at city police for a rise in retail thefts that has caused several businesses to close in the city.

In a hearing before members of Philadelphia City Council Tuesday, District Attorney Larry Krasner said he doesn’t understand why there isn’t more prosecution of retail thefts. Multiple Wawa stores have closed in recent months, but Kranser said that’s not due to increasing theft.

He said stores are not using private security or stopping people for minor thefts and asked, “why some of them would take videos of people leaving rather than stop them.” He said police cannot go after retail theft when they don’t have the personnel to deal with the crime that is going on in retail establishments.

He asked council members for an additional $7 million in funding to better address retail theft as well as a rise in carjacking incidents. Councilmember James Harrity, who lives in Kensington, urged police to take action against those stealing from stores.

“We have no stores, there’s no place for us to shop. That leads me to believe they are repeat offenders, they need to be charged, I’m sorry I just don’t get it,” Harrity said.

Councilmember Cindy Bass told Krasner that many cases of retail theft are going unchecked and that retail stores are continuing to close because of thefts. Krasner replied that police are able to write a summary offense, but they aren’t doing it. He said retailers are not going after people who steal less than $500 dollars in merchandise because the summary offense is little more than a traffic ticket in many situations.

“Obviously, we know the struggles that PPD is having with staffing. It’s happening all over the country with police,” Krasner said.  whyy.org
 

Big City Property Crime Spikes - But Urban Centers Remain Safe: Data
Why fear of crime more than crime itself is holding back America’s downtowns

People are scared of urban centers. They shouldn’t be.

Anyone paying attention to big-city politics right now is probably aware of the salience of crime as an issue. Paul Vallas, one of two candidates in Chicago’s early April mayoral runoff, is running an unabashed law-and-order campaign in a city where car thefts doubled between 2021 and last year. In Philadelphia, 89 percent of respondents to a recent survey ahead of that city’s mayoral election in November said “crime” should be the top priority for elected officials. And in Washington, DC, President Joe Biden recently abandoned his commitment to DC home rule by refusing to veto a Republican measure to block the city’s proposed updated criminal code over concerns that it was soft on crime.

Except here’s the thing: While crime has risen since the pandemic in most US cities, it’s not spiking in downtowns.

Crime is up, but not up much downtown

That’s what Love and her colleagues found when they crunched the data. She and her team have spent the last few months collecting statistics and conducting about 100 interviews with office workers, small business owners, and other folks in New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Chicago — four cities where the downtown business districts have been slow to recover. They then broke out data for violent crime and property crime for each of those cities’ downtowns.

Homicides spiked nationwide in the early part of the pandemic, before leveling off and then declining slightly between 2021 and 2022. Violent crime more broadly — a category that includes rape and aggravated assault — trended up in each city between 2019 and 2022, to varying degrees. Chicago saw a 5 percent increase in violent crime during that time, Philadelphia saw a 1 percent increase, New York saw a 26 percent increase, and Seattle saw a 22 percent increase.

Property crime — a category that includes offenses like larceny and car break-ins — saw a sharper uptick in all four cities. Philadelphia saw city-wide property crime increase by 17 percent, New York 38 percent, Seattle 17 percent, and Chicago 36 percent.

But here’s the twist: in all four of those cities, the share of all property crimes happening downtown remained relatively stable or declined. Violent crime downtown also stayed relatively stable, declining by 2 percent in Seattle, ticking up by 1 percent in Chicago and Philadelphia, and by 2 percent in New York City.

So downtowns were some of the safest places to be in these cities pre-pandemic. And, by the end of last year, they still were. That fact, though, makes small upticks in crime numbers more perceptible, Love said. vox.com

RELATED: The geography of crime in four U.S. cities: Perceptions and reality

 
'New Approach' on Crime Coming to Chicago?
Chicago chooses Brandon Johnson for mayor - and a new approach on crime

Former union organizer Brandon Johnson has been elected as Chicago's next mayor in a victory widely seen as a boost for progressive Democrats.

Mr Johnson, 47, won the hotly contested race over former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, a fellow Democrat. The election comes as Chicago struggles with crime, a central theme of both candidates' electoral campaigns.

Mr Johnson has vowed to invest more on mental health treatment, rather than on additional police and jails. Speaking to supporters on Tuesday night, Mr Johnson vowed to usher in a "new chapter" in Chicago in which residents from all walks of life would be cared for by city officials.

During the contentious campaign, Mr Johnson and Mr Vallas regularly sparred over ways to address rising crime.

The murder rate in Chicago has risen 20% since 2018, while car thefts have risen by 114% in the same period. Other forms of crimes have risen over the five-year period, too.

While Mr Vallas promised to hire hundreds of additional officers to fight crime - and was endorsed by the police union - Mr Johnson vowed to invest city funds in intervention methods focused on de-escalating conflict, as well as addressing root causes of crime such as schools, jobs and mental health.

Current Mayor Lori Lightfoot - who came in third in the February race - had increasingly come under fire over her handling of Chicago's crime from her political opponents. bbc.com


Meanwhile, Biden Doubles Down on Commitment to Fund Police
White House signals no crime shift after liberal win in Chicago mayor's race
The White House defended President Joe Biden's policy prescriptions to counter crime after the more liberal Democrat in the race to become Chicago's next mayor won, despite previously endorsing redirecting funding from police departments.

"He believes that we should fund the police and give law enforcement the resources they need for effective policing," she told reporters Wednesday. "That is something that the president has been very vocal about and has taken action."

Jean-Pierre cited Community Oriented Policing Services programs and $350 million in funding provided through the American Rescue Plan Act, which local governments could have used "to keep cops on beat."

"The president has been very clear about this ... and making sure that American families and communities are protected and feel safe, and he's going to continue to do that work," she said.

The Chicago mayoral race was primarily defined by the candidates' respective positions regarding crime, with Johnson contending with past comments he made about defunding police departments. Instead, in his campaign, he underscored his hopes to hire more detectives while addressing mental health. washingtonexaminer.com


Executive Stabbed to Death in San Francisco
The latest example of crime & lawlessness plaguing the Bay Area

Cash App founder Bob Lee killed in San Francisco stabbing, sources say

Sources identified Lee as the victim to NBC Bay Area. He had been serving as the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency company MobileCoin.

A man who was fatally stabbed early Tuesday near downtown San Francisco was tech executive Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App and former chief technology officer of Square, sources told NBC Bay Area.

In a statement Wednesday, the chief executive of MobileCoin said that Lee "passed away yesterday" and praised his business acumen. He did not specify Lee's cause of death.

The fatal stabbing could intensify scrutiny on public safety issues in San Francisco, where residents and business owners have grown increasingly concerned about violent crimes and thefts. Mayor London Breed has pledged to crack down on crime.

Tributes poured in on social media for Lee, with former MMA fighter Jake Shields remembering the tech executive as a "loyal friend." nbcnews.com


Another City Battles High Crime & Police Shortages
Police shortage plagues the city as crime spikes in Baltimore
Baltimore City Police Department is now 489 officers short of their budgeting 2,604 sworn officers, according to a department spokesperson. According to census data, the city has a population of 563,455 residents. That averages to only one police officer for every 266 people in the city.

The department has lost 34 officers this year, while only graduating 14 officers in the latest academy class. The department is even offering a $5,000 sign-on bonus and a $1,000 housing allowance for up to a year.  foxbaltimore.com


Chicago Mayor’s Race Could Be a Blueprint for Democratic Messaging on Crime

(Update) U.S. Mass Shootings in 2023: A Partial List

Remote Work Continues to Cause Friction at Employers Across U.S.
Many workers willing to take a pay cut to work remotely, survey finds
Americans have grown so fond of working from home that many are are willing to sacrifice pay for the privilege of skipping the office.

So found a recent survey by recruiting firm Robert Half, which polled thousands of U.S. employees and hiring managers about their attitudes toward remote work. Some workers said they're willing to take a pay cut — with an average reduction of 18% — to remain fully remote, Paul McDonald, a Robert Half senior executive director, told CBS News.

Overall, roughly one in three workers who go into the office at least one day a week said they were willing to earn less for the opportunity to work remotely.

The Robert Half survey polled more than 2,500 U.S. workers and 2,100 hiring managers in November. It found that roughly three-quarters of workers said they are happier and more productive when they're working from home despite sometimes having to work longer hours.

Yet those preferences are running smack into a push by employers to get people back in the office. A recent Resume Builder survey found that nine out of 10 companies will require employees back to the office in 2023. cbsnews.com


$1M Fire Leaves Dollar General in Ruins
Dollar General left in ruins after multi-alarm fire in Shenandoah
A multi-alarm fire in Schuylkill County damaged a Dollar General store Monday. According to a Schuylkill County Communications Center supervisor, multiple fire crews arrived at the Gold Star Plaza in Shenandoah around 4:00 p.m. for a Dollar General fully engulfed in flames. The cause of the fire is under investigation and the building is deemed to be a total loss, officials say. pahomepage.com


The Upside, Downside of Inflation on Grocers: Report
Some of the biggest shifts have come in the switch to store brands, visits to discount retailers and shopping frequency. Indeed, the research underscores shoppers’ willingness to break from norms.


Walmart will add thousands of EV charging stations to stores by 2030

Apple to open first company-owned retail store in India

US private payrolls growth slows in March -ADP
 

Senior Jobs Market

Director of Retail Solutions - North America job posted for Auror in Denver, CO
We are seeking a Director of Retail Solutions to drive growth in our North American market. This role will be focused on selling our SaaS retail crime intelligence platform by developing new prospects, and progressing Enterprise level prospects through our sales process. You will report directly to the VP of Retail Solutions - North America, and work alongside our Marketing, Partnerships and Customer Success team to grow our customer base. The core focus of this role is to drive growth in our retail market in North America.  apply.workable.com