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The U.S. Crime Surge
The Retail Impact

Retail Violence Soars While Prosecution Drops
A rising level of violence as some employees fight back against shoplifters, thieves

Thieves have become more brazen. Now, against the advice of experts, some store employees are fighting back.

It has happened twice in the past week at jewelry stores in Southern California. At about noon Sunday, a store in a Huntington Beach mall was attacked by smash-and-grab bandits, police said. The attack came five days after a similar incident at David's Jewelers in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte.

Incidents like these – no word yet on whether they may be linked – alarm retail security experts, raising fears that they could lead to serious injuries or death to employees, criminals or bystanders.

Violence rises; prosecution drops

Frustration among merchants has been building in tandem with the growing level of violence. Some aren't surprised that the result would swell into conflict even as they condemn it.

A National Retail Federation survey of its member companies, many of them large chains, taken before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, found the average number of shoplifting apprehensions fell five-fold between 2014 and 2019. Prosecutions were down, too.

California theft gets national attention

Issues of shoplifting and retail theft play out nationwide, but California has received some of the most attention. Store owners have been shaken by incidents of thugs shattering store windows, grabbing armfuls of merchandise and fleeing. In the past, store detectives or uniformed guards might have intervened, holding shoplifting suspects for police. Nowadays, however, workers are often urged only to stand back and, at most, document the crime in progress.

California shoplifting law puts felony threshold at $950

Retailers blame Proposition 47, passed by California voters in 2014, which reclassified many theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Under the measure, a nonviolent theft was no longer a felony unless it involved goods valued at least $950. Previously, it was $400. Critics say the measure encourages thieves to hit multiple businesses by imposing the threshold per incident, not cumulatively.

“This is just a different manifestation of this developing culture of lawlessness throughout the United States, but in particular, Los Angeles and San Francisco,” Vern Pierson, immediate past president of the California District Attorneys Association and district attorney in El Dorado County, told USA TODAY in January. yahoo.com

Rising Prices Fuel First-Time Shoplifter Boom
Cost-of-living crisis sparks boom in 'first time' shoplifters with supermarket bosses saying theft levels are 'off the charts'

Thefts have soared in shops with many shoplifters shoplifting for the first time

The cost of living crisis has sparked a boom in 'first time' shoplifters, according to supermarket bosses. Thefts have soared since the beginning of the year and are continuing to increase in the wake of price rises caused by the war in Ukraine which have left many consumers struggling to make ends meet.

As a result, retailers say theft levels are 'off the charts so far this year' according to analysts as well as anecdotal evidence from supermarket bosses to their trade journal, The Grocer. The magazine said: 'Store managers have told The Grocer of higher crime rates as they're noticing 'new first time shoplifters' as opposed to 'the usual suspects.''

Professional shoplifters tend to target high value goods they can sell on, such as alcohol, razors and other items but a new breed are stealing even the cheapest of products from the shelves, said The Grocer.

Retail analyst, Bryan Roberts, of Shopfloor Insights said: 'The situation is definitely getting worse' and said the crime rate was 'off the charts'.

Some shops have reintroduced the one-way entry and exit points that were around during Covid to help socially distance customers but are now there to make it easier to track who comes in and out. Others have beefed up security in terms of personnel and/or CCTV cameras.

'The return of 'stealing to eat' instead of being able to 'afford to eat' is yet more proof that we need effective policy solutions that put sufficient income in people's hands in a dignified way so that poverty and resorting to crime do not become mainstream means of securing the most basic essentials of living.'

Shore Capital analyst, Clive Black, said the 'temptation to shoplift is likely to grow for some' as prices rose. The reported 'rise' comes as police officers were told in the last week to use their ‘discretion’ when deciding whether to prosecute shoplifters amid the cost of living crisis.

Andy Cooke, the new policing watchdog, risked the wrath of retailers as he suggested officers should weigh up whether it was best to haul those who steal to eat before the courts. dailymail.co.uk

RELATED: Shop staff paying for strangers’ groceries or turning a blind eye to theft

Seattle’s Crime and Punishment
New City Attorney Targeting Repeat Offenders & Restoring Order to Seattle

No more automatic leniency for the most prolific criminals.

Good news out of Seattle, for once. The city’s most prolific criminals will no longer be eligible for an automatic get-out-of-jail-free pass. Ann Davison won election in November on a campaign of restoring order to a city losing control of the streets. Now she’s won a notable victory with a new agreement that will increase the chances that repeat offenders face consequences.

The new deal revises a 2019 agreement that let Seattle’s notoriously lenient Community Court handle some two dozen misdemeanors, including theft of up to $750 in goods, residential trespass, and property destruction. The accused were typically released with a referral to support services and sometimes an assignment for a life-skills class or community service. We recently wrote about William Piccone, who in recent years has been referred for prosecution to the Seattle city attorney 46 times.

The revised agreement excludes those who have had 12 or more charges referred to the city attorney for prosecution in the past five years, including one in the past eight months. Their cases will instead be heard in Municipal Court, where judges can require bail and impose jail sentences.

Ms. Davison pushed for the revisions after learning that a mere 118 individuals were responsible for more than 2,400 crimes in Seattle over the past five years.

Prolific criminals qualified for Community Court regardless of their rap sheets, and they had four tries—often involving multiple misdemeanors—before being pushed into Municipal Court. Excluding cases involving domestic violence and traffic offenses, the Community Court was handling 55% of all crimes referred to the city attorney by police for prosecution, Ms. Davison’s office reported.

Ms. Davison’s proposal met significant resistance from the Community Court and the city’s Department of Public Defense. But she asked Municipal Court judges to intervene, and they finally approved the revisions. Seattle still has a long way to go to be a safe city, but the voters are beginning to see some results from their democratic intervention. wsj.com

RELATED: New Seattle City Attorney Had to Ask for Permission to Prosecute Criminals

From a Boulder King Soopers to a Buffalo Tops Market
Boulder feeling impact of mass shooting at supermarket in Buffalo, New York
A little over a year after the mass shooting at the south Boulder King Soopers, the community turned on their TVs or opened social media to news of a similar story unfolding in Buffalo, New York. Ten people killed in a shooting at a local grocery store.

While the motivation may have been different, the circumstances — the location, the number of people who died, the local time it occurred — were close enough to what happened in Boulder, that it could easily lead to people feeling retraumatized, according to Janine D’Anniballe, director of trauma services at Mental Health Partners.

“Really, anytime there is a mass shooting event, it’s likely to trigger our community or people who’ve been impacted by the King Soopers shooting,” she said. “(But) the more similar to the original trauma, the more powerful the trigger, for sure.”

Some community members quickly stepped up to show their support. Members of the Boulder Collective Facebook group, for example, collected signatures for an e-card they planned to send to Buffalo. Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett reached out to Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown with the intent to show solidarity and offer support for the community — whenever it may feel ready to accept it.

“The circumstances of the Buffalo shooting in particular hit very close to home as we in Boulder know all too well the terror and the trauma of a mass shooting in our beloved neighborhood grocery store,” Brockett said in Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

The Boulder Strong Resource Center on Baseline Road remains open for anyone impacted by the King Soopers shooting. Learn more at weareboulderstrong.com. dailycamera.com

All Talk, No Action on Mass Shootings?
Task force created in 2020 to prevent mass shootings hasn't held a single meeting
Last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled an agenda meant to prevent future acts of domestic terrorism in the wake of the racist massacre at the Tops Markets near Buffalo's Cold Spring neighborhood.

In 2020, her predecessor signed into law a similar measure, also prompted by a horrific hate crime. Among other provisions, it created a state Domestic Terrorism Task Force to recommend how to stop future mass shootings like the one on May 14. Two years later, the task force has yet to meet. buffalonews.com

Buffalo prosecutors get more time to build case against Tops shooting suspect

NYC Mayor Adams pushes for gun ‘scanners’ at Port Authority

Op-Ed: America's solution to mass shootings must come from Congress

 

COVID Update

584.4M Vaccinations Given

US: 85.1M Cases - 1M Dead - 81.7M Recovered
Worldwide: 528.3M Cases - 6.3M Dead - 498.8M Recovered

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

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 358  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 772
*Red indicates change in total deaths

COVID Transmission in US by County

'We Are Blinding Ourselves' to Another COVID Surge
WHO chief: The COVID pandemic is ‘most certainly not over’
The COVID-19 pandemic is “most certainly not over,” the head of the World Health Organization warned Sunday, despite a decline in reported cases since the peak of the omicron wave. He told governments that “we lower our guard at our peril.”

The U.N. health agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told officials gathered in Geneva for opening of the WHO’s annual meeting that “declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus.” He also noted that almost 1 billion people in lower-income countries still haven’t been vaccinated.

In a weekly report Thursday on the global situation, WHO said the number of new COVID-19 cases appears to have stabilized after weeks of decline since late March, while the overall number of weekly deaths dropped. thehill.com

How COVID Upended Retail
Perfect Storm – Retail is Changing, and Fast

The pandemic, e-commerce, labor shortages, and supply chain issues are further igniting the transformation of the retail industry.

When the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world two years ago, with stores and restaurants temporarily closing and office staff working from home, the reeling retail world was upended with labor shortages and supply chain challenges.

While 2019 saw a record number (9,302) of permanent store closures in the U.S., 2020 broke that record with 12,200 store closures. Labeled a “retail apocalypse” by some, one third of the closures were department stores, clothing chains, large chain retailers, and mall-oriented companies, according to CoStar Group, a commercial real estate firm. That same year, more than two dozen major retailers filed for bankruptcy, including Nieman Marcus, J. Crew, Pier 1, and the parent companies of Ann Taylor and Men’s Warehouse.

As a result of the temporary closing of stores and restaurants, many businesses scrambled to survive by creating a greater online sales and social media presence while offering services such as curbside pickup, increased delivery services, and online delivery at service centers.

At the same time, stay-at-home mandates and social distancing requirements caused many consumers, some for the first time, to rely on buying products online. According to the NRF, nearly 45 percent of baby boomers who were surveyed said they’re now shopping more online. dbusiness.com

Grappling with the COVID Era Remote Transition
How employers can help struggling hybrid workers

Employers can't just take one approach toward this issue but there are a number of ways to adjust old structures to new work realities.

Employers transitioning to hybrid work arrangements may need to reevaluate their performance management strategies and recalibrate how they approach employees who are struggling, according to sources who spoke to HR Dive.

One of the biggest challenges may be the relative lack of face time employers have with their reports than they otherwise would have had pre-pandemic, according to Joe Du Bey, CEO and co-founder of workplace management software firm Eden Workplace. In the past, visual cues signaling distress could be easy to pick up. That same process might take a bit more effort when moving to hybrid arrangements.

Working through struggles

Employers can’t just take one approach to working with underperforming hybrid workers, Du Bey said. Some software platforms may allow managers to track how their reports are doing, but there also may be space for shout outs when an employee does well, which can be “critical for their mental health,” he added.

Avoiding overload: cfodive.com

The U.S. is in a sixth COVID wave—but it doesn’t look like it on a new CDC map

Repeat Infections With COVID-19 May Become the Norm

Monkeypox ‘isn’t COVID,’ but CDC still wants public to be aware of cases

Monkeypox Not Yet as Concerning as COVID-19

 

Walmart's RFID Adoption Ripple Effects
IDTechEx Discusses the Effect Walmart's RFID Mandate Will Have On RFID Adoption in Retail
The big news in the RFID industry at the start of 2022 was Walmart's announcement — the world's leading retailer revealed plans to expand RFID use from retail apparel to other retail departments. The retailer requested that its suppliers for the departments listed above place Gen 2 UHF RFID tags, which has a frequency of 902-928 megahertz, on all items delivered to Walmart.

According to Walmart, UHF RFID tags were adopted in its retail apparel sector in 2020, and inventory management has improved dramatically since then, resulting in a better in-store shopping experience for customers, additional online and in-store pickup opportunities, and improved sales potential. This is considered the primary motivator for Walmart to expand RFID deployment to other categories.

The use of UHF RFID proliferated initially in retail in the apparel and footwear segments. Last year, more than 70% of UHF RFID tags are utilized in that two segments combined, according to IDTechEx, a market research firm that has been monitoring RFID for more than 20 years. Now, Walmart's announcement may potentially accelerate the UHF RFID adoption process in other retail segments, inevitably driving other retailers to follow suit.

UHF readers are becoming lower cost and ultimately may be integrated into consumer smartphones, as NFC often is. UHF reader smartphones are available now but mainly at price points where they are used in the industry, and they are not targeted at consumers. prnewswire.com
 
DG Workers to Hold Protest & Demand Higher Wages
Dollar General Workers To Hold Rally During Annual Shareholder Meeting

Workers from across the nation will come together to demand higher wages, safer working conditions as corporation faces widespread scrutiny

For the first time ever, Dollar General workers, supported by labor advocacy groups, will hold a rally on May 25th during the retailer’s annual shareholder meeting to demand higher wages and safer working conditions.

The rally marks the public launch of a national movement to take on Dollar General and demand they address dangerous in-store conditions and poverty wages that are affecting workers’ health and well-being. This demonstration comes after years of grassroots organizing from worker groups that have mobilized workers at the community level to speak out and fight for the changes they need in their workplaces.

Dollar General has recently made headlines for their perpetually understaffed stores, in-store violence including armed robbery and murder, backbreaking pace of work, poverty wages, rat infestations, and OSHA violations.

Now, workers are calling on shareholders to join them in demanding the corporation address these issues. Workers and advocates will join together in Peay Park before marching towards the Dollar General shareholder meeting taking place at Goodlettsville City Hall. During the action, workers will hand out fliers and hold banners and signs calling on the retailer to pay a living wage and address dangerous working conditions. tntribune.com

Apple's War on Homelessness
Apple spent millions, but it couldn’t pull these residents out of homelessness

Program highlights just how hard it is to house people in the Bay Area

When Apple wanted to clear a large homeless encampment from its property last year, the tech giant didn’t just sweep everyone off the site — it spent millions of dollars to give dozens of people a nine-month motel stay and help them find housing.

Now, that nine-month motel reprieve is set to expire Monday, and while the wealthy tech company’s efforts have helped permanently house eight people, more than three times that many were still awaiting placements days before the deadline.

The situation, which has left multiple residents anxious about where they will go when the clock runs out, highlights just how difficult it is to pull people out of homelessness in the Bay Area — even for one of the world’s most valuable companies. mercurynews.com

'Unacceptable' Data Use - UK Blocks Clearview FRT
Clearview AI fined in UK for illegally storing facial images

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK's privacy watchdog and told to delete the data of UK residents.

The company gathers images from the internet to create a global facial recognition database.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) says that breaches UK data protection laws.

It has ordered the firm to stop obtaining and using the personal data of UK residents.

John Edwards, UK information commissioner, said: "The company not only enables identification of those people, but effectively monitors their behaviour and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable." bbc.com

Register Now!
IAFCI Annual Spotlight on Fraud Conference
The International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators (IAFCI) Connecticut Chapter annual Spotlight on Fraud Conference is set for June 9-10, 2022 at Mohegan Sun Casino Uncasville, CT. This is a great opportunity to hear about some recent financial crime trends and how to address and prevent them.

Not only retail crime but also cryptocurrency, social media investigations and many more presentations. This is also a great opportunity to network with various branches of federal, state and local law enforcement and the financial investigators industry. Come and hear some awesome presentations.

Conference Agenda | Registration Information

Starbucks is closing all 130 locations in Russia, following McDonald's lead
Starbucks is closing Russian locations after suspending business in March. The chain's 130 Russian stores make up less than 1% of global revenue.

Adidas has lured employees back to campus with free meals and fitness classes


Quarterly Results

Ralph Lauren Q4 NA comp's in stores up 21%, sales up 19%, Europe comp's up 77%, sales up 26%, Asia comp's up 12%, sales up 20%, sale up 18%

Ralph Lauren FY 22 North America up 49%, Europe sales up 53%, Asia sales up 25%, net sales up 41%
Petco Q1 comp's up 5.1%, sales up 4.3%

Abercrombie & Fitch Q1 sales up 4%

AutoZone Q3 comp's up 2.6%, net sales up 5.9%

Advance Auto Parts Q1 comp's up 0.6%, net sales up 1.3%

Best Buy Q1 Enterprise comp's down 8%, Domestic comp's down 8.5%, domestic online sales down 14.9%, sales down 8.5%
 

Senior LP & AP Jobs Market

Director AP - Distribution job posted for The Home Depot in Atlanta, GA
Responsible for the design and execution of all programs within the Supply Chain organization relating to safety, environmental compliance, and loss prevention. This will include driving company programs designed to reduce accidental losses to customers, associates, and property, comply with applicable regulatory requirements, theft and fraud detection and shrink reduction. The Director will focus on maximizing the performance of the Supply Chain team to meet performance and company goals. careers.homedepot.com