Another Weekend of Violence in America

970 Shootings - 318 Killed - 996 Injured in 15 Big Cities Over Past 8 Weekends
The D&D Daily's Big City Weekend Violence Study - Memorial Day to Labor Day

The Daily's study analyzes weekend shooting data in 15 major U.S. cities from Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day Weekend 2022

Starting Memorial Day Weekend, the D&D Daily began compiling and analyzing data from 15 major U.S. cities to get a snapshot of summer gun violence.

This past weekend, from July 15th through July 17th, there were 110 shootings recorded in these same cities, resulting in 42 deaths and 100 injuries.

The chart below shows the totals for each of the past eight weekends dating back to Memorial Day weekend.

The D&D Daily will continue to track this data throughout the summer to capture the weekend violence trend in our nation's big cities as warm weather typically brings about more crime and violence.

Click here to see the list of incidents per city and follow along each week this summer as this spreadsheet will be updated every Monday. docs.google.com

Read more coverage about America's crime and gun violence epidemic in the section below
 

The Internet Is Pouring Gasoline on the Nation's ORC Fire
Customers across the globe are unknowingly buying stolen goods online
As San Francisco faces a spike in retail theft, the ABC7 News' I-Team is looking into just how pervasive the crime rings operate on our streets and online. Police say these individuals often plan months in advance how to steal, where to resell, and at what price.

"These operations are hundreds of thousands of dollars and the venture into the millions when you put them all together," said San Francisco Police Sgt. Adam Lobsinger. On Wednesday, SFPD arrested a man who was able to sell, stock, and resell $200,000 worth of stolen goods in his apartment. It turns out - cases like that are happening across the Bay Area.

Organized retail crime rings - how do they really work?

Police say they often start small and involve using middlemen or a "fence," who steal and try to offload stolen items as fast as possible. "They culminate in something like this, where we're arresting one person or (persons) and they're selling hundreds of thousands of goods online nationally and we know they got these stolen items from multiple people," Lobsinger said.

According to an analysis by the Senate Judiciary Committee, there is more than $500 billion worth of stolen and counterfeit goods sold online across the world each year. In some cases, it's the online retailers tipping off investigators.

So what's being done to crack down?

State Sen. Nancy Skinner (CA-9th District) introduced a bill that puts more responsibility on online retailers while tightening requirements for sellers.

"So the marketplace has to get information like their business license, the receipt of goods, those kinds of things to prove they are the owners of these goods in a legitimate way and they haven't been stolen," Skinner said.

Skinner's legislation, SB 301 already passed the Senate and is moving to the Assembly. Investigators say these organized crime rings operate on everyday sites we all use like eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace. abc7news.com

Brick & Mortar Crime Closures in the News
Retail crime expert Karl Langhorst weighs in on coffee chain closings due to safety concerns
Many brick and mortar retailers are seeing a growing amount of violent criminal activity, which ranges from smash and grab robberies to increasingly brazen acts of organized retail crime to tragically, active shooting incidents.

Most recently, Starbucks announced the closing of more than a dozen locations due to safety concerns, although some also tie the closures to recent unionization.

"It has been my experience that retailers are in the business to be profitable," said Karl Langhorst, adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Criminal Justice. "If they are closing stores, be they union or nonunion, it is usually because keeping the store open is no longer viable because of profitability headwinds."

Langhorst told The Bee that rising violent crime in retail establishments has had an increasingly negative impact on employee hiring and retention, customer traffic, and the ability for retailers to maintain acceptable store standards. "The perceived lack of consequences by criminal offenders for their actions, coupled with significant law enforcement staffing shortages, has created what unfortunately is an increasingly difficult and dangerous situation," he said.

A survey by the National Retail Federation last year found that 82% of loss-prevention professionals said mall or store violence/shooting incidents has become more of a priority over the past five years.

"This troubling trend is not only negatively impacting retailers and their employees and customers, but also the communities they serve."

Langhorst’s courses include the study of organized retail crime, active shooters and prevention methodologies. uc.edu

'America has Become Unsafe': More Crime Closures Coming?
Starbucks CEO Discusses Issues That Led to 16 Store Closures

Citing safety concerns, Starbucks will be closing 16 retail locations nationwide before the end of July.

In a video of an alleged internal company meeting, now-interim CEO Howard Schultz could be heard criticizing officials at the local, state, and federal levels for failing to fight crime and address mental illness.

“It has shocked me that one of the primary concerns that our retail partners have is their own personal safety,” Schultz can be heard saying. “America has become unsafe.”

"Starbucks is a window into America, we have stores in every community, and we are facing things in which the stores were not built for and so we’re listening to our people and closing stores," Schultz continued. "This is just the beginning, there are going to be many more."

In the video, Schultz can be heard discussing staff concerns related to issues around mental illness, homelessness, and crime, which he said were the catalysts for Starbucks’ store closures. Specifically, Schultz pointed to their concerns over ongoing drug use in store bathrooms.

The store closures have come a little over six months after the first Starbucks employees formally voted to unionize. Several other stores around the U.S. followed in their footsteps during subsequent months.

Starbucks confirmed to The National Desk that 16 high-incident stores across the country were shuttering, and said the company will continue to work with partners to help address the challenges communities are facing. wjla.com

Robberies & Assaults Up 37% in NYC
NYC Mayor Adams renews tough-on-crime pledge
Mayor Adams vowed to follow through on his promises to crack down on crime Sunday as he touted recent drops in murders and shootings, although other forms of lawlessness are high. Winning election on a tough-on-crime platform, Adams has made controversial moves like bringing back the NYPD’s plainclothes units.

“We’re going to continue to move forward. We’re going to turn this crime thing around,” he said on WBLS. “And when we do so, people are going to really see the progress we’ve made in other parts of the city.

“Crime has really taken all of the oxygen out of the room but once we do that, they’re going to see what we’re doing around education, around housing and some of the other important issues,” he added.

So far this year, murders are down nearly 8% and shooting incidents decreased more than 10%, compared with the same time frame in 2021, according to NYPD stats. But both crimes are still at peak levels compared with pre-pandemic levels, and overall stats for major categories of crime that include robberies and assaults are up more than 37%.

Adams echoed critics of Albany’s controversial bail reforms, although expert opinions are mixed on whether releasing suspects for misdemeanors and some felonies is contributing to the city’s spike in crime.

“We took almost 3,800 guns off the streets, and many of the people who had carried those guns were able to return to the streets,” the mayor said. msn.com

#1 City in Murders Per Capita in the U.S.
New Orleans, LA: Business owners say crime is taking over neighborhoods
Residents and business owners in the French Quarter say crime is taking over their neighborhood and it's taking a toll on business. They said there needs to be a stronger police presence to help keep people safe and reduce crime.

New Orleanians love their city and so do tourists, but this beautiful city is number one per capita in murders in the country. Residents and business owners say the crime here is out of control.

Christian Pendleton from Brennan's Restaurant and representing the Louisiana Restaurant Association said the record high crime rates are making it difficult to find employees, and that the restaurant is short more than 100 staff members.

So far in 2022, New Orleans Police have worked at least 160 murders. An unofficial tally showed 31 killings in June - the most in a single month since July 2004. There have been more homicides in the first six months of this year than in the entire years of 2018 and 2019. wwltv.com
 
Store closures prove that 'the criminals are running the show'

How stores can learn from casinos to stop repeat shoplifters

Company that sold Tops gunman body armor left controversial digital trail

US: 91.2M Cases - 1M Dead - 86.6M Recovered
Worldwide: 567.8M Cases - 6.3M Dead - 539M Recovered

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

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 360  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 787
*Red indicates change in total deaths

2nd Largest U.S. COVID Wave
When Will the BA.5 Wave End?
On Friday, the Biden administration renewed the nation’s COVID-19 public-health emergency through at least mid-October. The extension comes amid America’s second-largest COVID wave, fueled by the shifty, ultra-transmissible BA.5 subvariant, which is still causing countless new infections and reinfections across the country.

Unfortunately, the number of hospitalizations is now also on the rise — up by around 20 percent over the last two weeks, with a corresponding increase in the number of COVID-positive ICU patients. Last week, the CDC forecasted that COVID hospital admissions would increase more than fourfold by August 5.

The number of daily COVID deaths in the country has also ticked up; an average of more than 400 people are now dying with COVID every day, up from a post-Omicron wave low of 264 in early June — though still nowhere near the average of more than 2,600 daily deaths during the peak of the Omicron wave. Hospital COVID metrics are also a fraction of earlier pandemic peaks. nymag.com

The Pandemic's Impact on Retail Biometrics
Covid changed biometrics’ retail future. Unusual circumstances led media firm to map how much
Essence, which Ad Age named 2020’s top data and analytics agency, convened an international group of marketing thought leaders during the first two months of 2020 to hear what they thought advertising would look like in 2030. Then, of course, the pandemic changed much in daily life.

The same cast was reconvened at the end of that year to learn how opinions and predictions had been changed by a contagion that has gone on to kill more than one million people in the United States alone.

One chart in both surveys asked how likely each panelist thought 15 scenarios would occur. But the second mapped how perspectives changed in a matter of months in 2020. The results are startling when it comes to biometrics and privacy.

In the second survey, respondents were even more sure that use of biometric data would grow strongly over the next decade. The same is true of services and products becoming more personalized, a trend that would accelerate paired with biometrics. And, they said, access to personal data by governments and businesses is going to be more likely in 2030.

If the group, in aggregate, is right – and events occurring during the decade do not again change perspectives – it appears that biometric identifiers could be on the way to being the newest commodity with or without people’s consent.

The article also states that “more immediate” biometric apps deployed in the name of marketing will let consumers protect their data. biometricupdate.com
 
The Retail Evolution's Great Acceleration
How to maneuver in the pandemic-driven recession

Could COVID-19 create a long-term shift in the retail industry? Learn more about pre-pandemic retail trends that are gaining momentum and how a recession could affect consumer behavior.

Even before the COVID-19 crisis began, our report The next consumer recession found that retail was facing several financial issues that could make it difficult to weather a recession. Many retailers faced challenges already: increasing debt burdens, moderating revenue growth, compressing margins, increasing SG&A, and slowing asset turnover. Not surprisingly, we are starting to see these issues force several retailers to file for bankruptcy in recent weeks. But across retail, we are seeing significant weaknesses in the foundation: the technology and process architecture of retailers, often vulnerable to sudden shocks, are now completely exposed. Even many retailers that had been making incremental moves toward transformation have not been able to cope with the halt in store traffic, demand on digital, and shocks to the supply chain.

No matter the retailer, one cannot overstate the damage done when stores are closed for months at a time. Each regular customer represents a relationship that took years to develop and nurture and losing that continuity is a risk to any retailer’s position in the marketplace. The same is true with other stakeholders. Long-time employees, for example, have mastered what it takes to represent the brand over several years. Retailers are now having to create workforce flexibility, tools for secure collaboration, and positioning around furloughs, all while sustaining morale and keeping employees healthy. Even retailers who are faring well in the pandemic should take account of the damage done up and down their value chain and begin to develop strategies to restore what has been lost. What took years and even decades to build was severely damaged, if not destroyed, in a matter of weeks.

Retailers who grasp the challenge and join the gathering trends could well emerge stronger and provide a brighter future for employees, customers, and stakeholders alike. deloitte.com

Remote work spurs a national wage leveling
As more workers choose to work remotely, organizations face a dilemma: do they pay remote workers the same as those living in high-cost metropolitan regions?

Covid-19 public health emergency extended in the US

This Is How Many People Have Died From COVID-19 In California