NRF PROTECT 2022 Update

2022 NRF Ring of Excellence Honorees
NRF Protect to Honor Top Loss Prevention Professionals

NRF PROTECT takes place in Cleveland from June 21-23

The National Retail Federation will honor two veteran loss prevention professionals for their outstanding contributions to combat retail crime on June 23 during the annual NRF PROTECT conference in Cleveland.

“Loss prevention professionals embody the courage and character necessary to protect retail company assets, employees and customers from evolving threats,” NRF Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Content and Membership Martine Reardon said. “We are proud to honor and celebrate this year’s Ring of Excellence honorees for their significant and lasting impact on loss prevention and the retail industry.”

The Ring of Excellence Award is reserved for distinguished professionals who have shaped the loss prevention industry through their leadership and innovations. This year’s recipients are Van Carney, senior security and loss prevention consultant for Keiser Communications and Security LLC, and Alisa Dart, group vice president for asset protection for Albertsons Companies.

Carney spent nearly three decades leading loss prevention, safety and security for Domino’s corporate headquarters as well as its largest franchise, MSK Management. He is now employed at Keiser, where he developed the company’s physical security requirements and executive protection program. He recently uncovered a major embezzlement scheme, recovering a substantial portion of the $117,000 loss.

Dart has been in the asset protection field for more than 25 years. She oversees asset protection functions for more than 2,200 Albertsons Companies stores across 34 states and is a leader in defining standards and analytic functions to identify and reduce shrink. She has also held the positions of director of store loss at Nordstrom and national vice president of operations and asset protection at Macy’s Inc.  nrf.com


An Exciting Event with The Zellman Group at NRF PROTECT 2022

Meet former MLB power hitter Cecil Fielder at NRF PROTECT 2022 in The Zellman Group’s booth #4009 on Thursday, June 23rd between 12:00 noon to 1:00 PM. In his career, Cecil Fielder’s batting average was .255, with 744 runs, 200 doubles, 319 home runs, 1,008 RBI, and a .482 slugging average, drawing 693 walks for a .345 on-base percentage.

The Zellman Group is sponsoring Cecil Fielder and a digital photobooth. All photographs will be emailed to the recipients.
 

The U.S. Crime Surge
The Retail Impact

Murder Data: Is New York City Safer Than Rural America?
Analysis: New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America

Rising homicide rates don’t tell the whole story. When you dig deeper into data on deaths, you'll find the more urban your surroundings, the less danger you face.

Since the summer of 2020 the United States has been experiencing a deadly wave of violence, and New York City has not been immune. The number of homicides in the city shot up 47% in 2020, and rose another 4% last year. While the tally is down 9% so far this year there have been some shocking murders, not to mention a mass shooting on the subway that miraculously didn’t take any lives.

Regular consumers of the news would thus be forgiven for believing that the Big Apple has become a terribly dangerous place. And yes, it is markedly more dangerous than it was before the pandemic. I’m not here to dismiss concerns about rising crime in the city. But a little context is in order.

The historical context, which a fair number of people are aware of, is that New York’s pandemic murder wave followed a long decline, with the city’s homicide rate in 2021 still less than a fifth what it was in 1990. The geographical context, which seems to be less widely understood, is that while homicide rates fell sharply all over the the US in the 1990s, that decline slowed in the 2000s and reversed starting in 2015. In Philadelphia the homicide rate is now worse than it was in the early 1990s, and in Chicago it’s close. Which means there’s a growing gap between New York City and most of the rest of urban America.

New York isn’t just safe relative to other big cities. Suburban counties in large metro areas have tended to have the lowest homicide rates, but New York City’s was even lower from 2017 to 2019 and was only slightly higher in 2020, the most recent year for which the CDC has full data.

Some causes of death other than homicide seem pretty relevant to assessing safety. New Yorkers are only about as third as likely to die in transportation accidents of any kind as Americans are overall. Put homicide and transportation risks together, and New York starts looking like a refuge from the American carnage.

The overall lesson seems to be that the more urban your surroundings, the less danger you face. High homicide rates in some cities mean that the central counties in large metropolitan areas are on the whole slightly more dangerous than the suburban counties, but that’s the only exception. The risk of death from truly external causes, as defined here, is three times higher in rural and small-town America than in the country’s largest city. washingtonpost.com  bloomberg.com

Ignoring Crime Will Get DAs Recalled
Opinion: Delusion on San Francisco Crime Will Get You Recalled

Prosecutorial reform is one thing. Chesa Boudin’s incompetence is another.

San Francisco voters, by a roughly 60–40 margin, passed Yes on H, the measure to recall progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who initially squeaked out a ranked-choice victory in November 2019. Mayor London Breed will appoint a new D.A. to serve until the next general election in 2023.

Voters saw Boudin and his supporters as willing to sacrifice San Francisco to ideals that did not make things better for the average person. Boudin's ilk seem to whistle past the uptick in retail theft, the 1,792 accidental overdose deaths from 2019–2021, and the black market drug issues at U.N. Plaza, which I can report is an absolute hell on earth.

Boudin supporters blame the festering at U.N. Plaza on the failure of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) to make arrests. "The police are so incompetent and scandal-ridden. They clear less than 9 percent of their cases," Lara Bazelon, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and a Boudin supporter, told me last week. "If you commit a crime in the city, you have a 91 percent chance of just walking away. I feel like the conversation should be over right there."

The answer, of course, is not a crackdown on low-level, victimless crimes or a carte blanche for cops. Nor can a D.A. fix the economic or regulatory circumstances that lead to people living on the streets. But people want to live with the basic expectation that if they are robbed or assaulted, competent authorities will make an effort to bring the criminal to justice. Fair or not, San Franciscans were no longer living under that expectation, and hope the incoming regime will bring it back.

For the sake of progress, people will live with their cars being broken into again, with a double-digit rise in property crimes, with people literally dying on their streets. But at a certain point, and if given the chance, they will call a fire a fire, and will put it out. reason.com

LA's Progressive DA Could be Recalled Next Over Crime Policies
Los Angeles DA Gascon blames increasing crime on 'bad policies' that 'over-criminalize communities'
Gascon's comments came after San Francisco voters ousted District Attorney Chesa Boudin — a move that some political commentators interpreted as a preview into Gascon's fate, as his critics effort signatures to hold a similar recall vote in LA.

Gascon continued: "To create a safer community, absolutely we have to hold people accountable, but we also have to understand that we cannot do business as we always have and think that we're going to get any safer because the reality is that the problems we have today [are] the result of many of the bad policies that over-criminalize communities without really looking for a path forward to create the reduction of crime, the prevention of crime."

"The problems are a lack of high bail for arrestees, short or no incarceration for convicts, no treatment for the mentally ill, understaffed police departments, concentrated attacks on traditional values, politicians who blame inanimate guns instead of criminals & progressive DAs," the National Police Association tweeted.

More than 9 of 10 Los Angeles prosecutors are supporting the effort to recall Gascon, according to the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys (LAADDA), which released the results of a vote among county prosecutors in February. foxnews.com

Lawmakers Tackle Gun Violence & Organized Retail Theft
Op-ed: How to stop gun violence, fund police, take on organized theft
For years we have seen rising gun violence and commercial theft threaten public safety and hurt our local economies. I have worked with those on the frontlines to find unique solutions to help build thriving communities and keep families safe. I have also secured funding and helped pass legislation that will increase safety and discourage criminals from engaging in widespread commercial theft.

No two towns are the same, which is why I believe it is so important to build community partnerships. That’s why I have met with local police chiefs, community organizations, Decatur Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe, Decatur City Manager Scot Wrighton, and Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder to understand what they need to prevent and reduce crime in their communities. The result is that I successfully secured budget funds for both Springfield and Decatur to combat crime and invest in violence prevention and community development.

I also helped pass the organized retail crime bill, which was signed into law by the governor. This legislation is a comprehensive effort to curb crime and help us fight back against criminals responsible for smash and grabs.

These crimes are devastating our local economies, are oftentimes violent, and the people responsible are using the money they make selling stolen goods to carry out other criminal activities in our communities. We can’t allow these threats to our local businesses or our livelihoods.

Everyone wants to live in a peaceful community, where they can feel safe carrying on their daily lives. Gun violence and rising commercial theft have been threatening that peace and keeping our communities from prospering. By securing funds, building relationships with our community organizations and law enforcement, and passing legislation to curb criminal activity, we are one step closer to everyone feeling more safe. sj-r.com

Confronting Retail Crime & Violence Across the Pond
UK: The Fed’s annual conference set to address retail crime & cost-of-living crisis

National president Narinder Randhawa said:' We operate in an ever-changing and fiercely competitive trading environment, and we have to rise to the challenges this presents'

Independent retailers will have the opportunity to get ready for upcoming legislation and ensure their store stays afloat during current economic uncertainty at The Fed’s upcoming annual conference.

The event, which takes place later this month, will see panel discussions, presentations and debates on key topics such as retail crime and the deposit return scheme (DRS). National president Narinder Randhawa said: “We operate in an ever-changing and fiercely competitive trading environment, and we have to rise to the challenges this presents.”

Police chief Patrick Holdaway, lead of the National Business Crime Centre, and Sussex police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne, have both been confirmed to speak on the issue of crime, discussing recent developments to combat abuse and attacks against staff, and also focus on protection against shop theft.

This comes following a ‘milestone’ amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, meaning assaults against shopworkers will carry tougher penalties. betterretailing.com
 
NYC's Crime Crisis Taking a Toll
Most NYC residents say city is less safe since pandemic

Half of New Yorkers polled about Mayor Eric Adams said they have changed their daily routines in response to crime

A majority of New Yorkers believe the city has become less safe in recent years, with more than three-quarters saying they fear being a victim of a crime, according to a poll released Tuesday by the Siena College Research Institute.

Seventy percent said they feel less safe in the city now than before the pandemic. Half of those polled said they have changed their daily routine to feel safer, which included at least 40% of adults in every borough, gender, age, race, party or income level.

"New Yorkers are rightly worried about crime, which is why public safety has been Mayor Adams’ top priority since day one," said Adams' press secretary Fabien Levy. "While reducing crime in the city won’t happen overnight, we are seeing movement and the most recent figures from the NYPD reflect progress, with shootings going down week after week for the last two months." foxnews.com

The Debate Over Low-Level Shoplifting Punishment
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron Seeks Increased Punishment For Low-Level Shoplifting
According to the Courier Journal, Attorney General Daniel Cameron is asking the Kentucky Supreme Court to reinstate the overturned felony conviction of a woman found guilty of stealing $80.80 of merchandise by cheating a Walmart self-checkout kiosk by swapping bar codes.

Instead of being charged with a misdemeanor, the typical charge for stealing $500 or less, she was indicted and found guilty of a charge of unlawful access to a computer, which is a felony punishable by ten years in prison. The Kentucky Court of Appeals threw out the conviction as overly harsh, but Cameron, who is running for governor, feels differently. leoweekly.com

Supermarket where Buffalo shooting occurred could reopen by end of July

Mass shooting survivors, parents of victims demand Congress act on gun control

 

COVID Update

590M Vaccinations Given

US: 87.1M Cases - 1M Dead - 82.9M Recovered
Worldwide: 539.2M Cases - 6.3M Dead - 512M 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: 780
*Red indicates change in total deaths

U.S. COVID Cases by Region

Preparing for the Next Retail Lockdown
Should retail leases include clauses covering future shutdowns?
Beginning in March of 2020, most retailers throughout the U.S. were forced to close for at least a few weeks to comply with government shutdown orders due to the pandemic. When it came to retail tenants paying the landlord under such circumstances, it was not clear who was on the hook for what. Now that retailers appreciate the possibility of facing emergency shutdowns, some are asking for shutdown-related stipulations in writing.

Retailers are trying to negotiate terms like rent abatement or rent deferral in case of a new forced closure, according to GlobeSt. This is leading to difficult conversations with landlords who tend to be outright uninterested in discussing tenant rent abatement.

Some landlords who agreed to terms during the first shutdown have been amenable to carrying those over in the case of future forced business closures. The definition of a forced business closure is slippery, too, given the difference observed in 2020 between businesses that could not operate at all and those that could operate in a limited capacity via delivery or e-commerce.

The request for such clauses is not the first rethinking of what goes into a landlord-retail tenant lease since the start of the pandemic. Early in 2021, as a result of the spike in the number of retail real estate vacancies, retailers negotiated more short-term leases with landlords. Such leases are advantageous to retailers because they require less of a commitment and carry a reduced risk of being stuck in a lease during a downturn in foot traffic (or a forced closure). At the same time, they can allow a landlord to increase rent or kick out a tenant more quickly, possibly just as the retailer is developing a loyal customer base in the location. retaildive.com

Pandemic Headaches Causing Consumer Frustration
COVID Disruption Has Reversed Consumer Perception of Companies

A year marred by supply-chain delays and staffing shortages has reversed consumers’ improving perceptions of companies and government departments

The second year of Covid-19 will be remembered by many consumers as the era in which they couldn’t order stuff they needed, waited months for shipped items, and took hours to reach a customer service representative on the phone.

Now it’s official: The quality of customer experience offered by consumer-facing brands and government agencies declined in the year through April 2022.

That’s according to Forrester Research Inc.’s latest annual study on customer experience, which analyzed 96,211 U.S. consumers’ perceptions of 221 companies and federal agencies. Forrester derived customer experience scores of 0 to 100 from respondents’ answers to questions such as how easy a brand is to work with and how likely they are to use a brand again.

The average customer experience score, or CX score, in the 2022 survey was 71.3, down from 72.0 in 2021, Forrester found. CX Index scores had been steadily rising before this year’s slump. wsj.com

COVID Reinfections Surging
Americans keep getting reinfected with COVID-19 as new variants emerge
The phenomenon of reinfection -- which the CDC defines as a person who was infected, recovered, and then later became infected again -- has become increasingly reported over the last year, at first during the delta variant surge, and then during subsequent omicron surges.

Reinfection, spurred in part by more transmissible variants, waning immunity and relaxed attitudes towards effective mitigation measures like masks, mean that getting the pandemic under control is that much harder, even if cases are generally not severe, experts said. It also indicates that notions of "protection," both from natural infection and vaccination, held up earlier in the pandemic have changed. Similar to a common cold, it is possible to become infected multiple times.

ABC News contacted officials from health departments in all 50 states, and found that although data is still largely unavailable, a growing number of people do appear to experience reinfection with COVID-19. abc7.com

US will end Covid-19 testing requirement for air travelers entering the country

Two new versions of Omicron are gaining ground in the U.S.

Parts of Shanghai return to Covid lockdown

 

$175 Million Retail Sex Bias Settlement
Sterling Jewelers Reaches Settlement in Long-Running Sex Bias Case
Sterling Jewelers Inc. agreed to pay $125 million to roughly 68,000 female retail sales workers who sued the company 14 years ago alleging sex bias in pay and promotions, according to a press statement and class counsel. Sterling will also pay class counsel $50 million in attorneys’ fees and costs as part of the settlement.

The deal still needs to be approved by the arbitrator overseeing the landmark class arbitration, attorney Joseph M. Sellers told Bloomberg Law Thursday. After that, the case will be sent back to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York—where the women sued in 2008—and the class will ask the court to confirm the arbitrator’s award, Sellers said. He’s a partner in Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC in Washington.

Practices Changing

The settlement was partly spurred by changes the Signet Jewelers subsidiary had already begun to undertake to transform its pay and promotion practices, Sellers told Bloomberg Law. The company is working to eliminate decision-making factors that caused the bias in an industry where a vast majority of the employees are women, he said.

The pay practices that are changing discounted women’s prior experiences at the time they were hired and caused their starting pay to be lower than it should have been, Sellers said. They “started low and stayed low” because their pay wasn’t properly adjusted upward despite their success in selling Sterling’s merchandise, Sellers said.

‘Singular Importance’

Women continuing to receive unequal pay throughout their careers based on discrimination in the setting of their starting pay is a widespread problem that needed to be challenged, Sellers said. The courage and commitment of the women who spearheaded the suit through four trips to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and two to the US Supreme Court is another reason why the case is of “singular importance,” he said.

Sterling’s status as an industry leader is yet another reason why the settlement is so significant, Sellers said. The industry has always “been accessible but not necessarily hospitable to women,” he said. The case and the settlement will have a ripple effect not just within the company, but also likely throughout the industry, he said. bloomberg.com

Retail's Union Push Continues
Apple Retail Workers In New York Switch Unions
Apple retail workers at the Grand Central store in New York are unionizing with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) rather than Workers United as originally planned. The move is part of a broad organizing push at Apple retail stores across the country, where workers in Maryland, Georgia, and Kentucky have announced union campaigns. If any of the stores are successful, it will represent the first union of Apple employees in the United States.

In a press release, both unions framed the move as a positive step toward consolidating worker power across the country. “CWA has a national plan that will lead to density and collective power for Apple Retail workers,” said Lynne Fox, international president of Workers United. “It is counterproductive for Unions to go after ‘hot shops’ to the detriment of the collective good of the campaign.”

The move narrows the total number of national unions publicly working to organize Apple retail workers to two: CWA and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), which is organizing workers at the Towson Town Center store in Maryland. Workers in Towson have filed for a union election, set to start on June 15th. While not unheard of for multiple unions to represent workers at one company, the new strategy could help CWA push back at Apple’s anti-union tactics more effectively, workers say. vervetimes.com

The Never-Ending Supply Chain Crisis
Supply chain outlook still ‘pretty severe,’ economist says

The supply chain crunch will persist and place upward pressure on already high inflation, warned one Citigroup economist.

"The supply chain picture continues to look pretty severe... as a result of some of these geopolitical developments, their implications for commodities in particular," Citi Global Chief Economist Nathan Sheets said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "That's exacerbated by uncertainties about production as a result of Asia and China's zero COVID policy. ... And I think that it means for inflation, that we're going to continue to see some of this supply shock-driven upward pressure on prices."

"To relieve the stress in global trade, we ultimately need to see an improvement in the pandemic," the strategists wrote. "Some specific supply chain issues are beginning to unwind but there are still a number of lingering unknowns." In the note, Sheets and his team explained that the pandemic demolished the idea that global supply chains were fully optimized.

"Until the pandemic, the broad consensus was that supply chains were 'optimized' and functioning smoothly," they stated. "Firms were thought to have broadly solved the riddle of how to keep inventories lean and simultaneously ensure a reliable flow of inputs for use in production. ... Rather than a smooth predictable flow of demand, production, and transportation — the past two years have seen surging demand for final goods coupled with episodic disruptions in the availability of the inputs required to produce those goods." finance.yahoo.com

CFO Survey Has Grim Economic News
The recession will hit in the first half of 2023 and the Dow is headed lower: CNBC CFO survey

Amid high inflation that has become the No. 1 business risk, not a single chief financial officer surveyed by CNBC thinks a recession can be avoided.

Many economic prognosticators and Wall Street stock pickers have made it clear where they stand on inflation and the Federal Reserve policy response: the economy and markets will get worse before they get better. Many chief financial officers at top companies agree with them, according to the results from the latest CNBC CFO Council survey.

According to the majority (68%) of CFOs responding to the survey, a recession will occur during the first half of 2023. No CFO forecast a recession any later than the second half of next year, and no CFO thinks the economy will avoid a recession. cnbc.com

New Seasons workers launch union push at 2 Portland-area stores

Inflation rises at fastest pace since 1981, pushed up by record gas prices

Career regrets? Here's what workers wish they'd done differently
 

Senior LP & AP Jobs Market

Senior Manager, Asset Protection - Ecommerce job posted for Disney Parks, Parks, Experiences and Products in Magna, UT
We have an exciting opening for a Senior Manager, Asset Protection. You will lead and manage NA processes and programs to protect company assets, people and brand. Our mission for this role is to provide an operational focus on workplace and physical security programs, profit protection and investigations. You will report to the Consumer Products, Games and Publishing Executive Director, Global Asset Protection and Safety.  jobs.disneycareers.com