Using Tech & Data to Stop ORC
How Can I Avoid Thefts in My Stores?

Retailers need to implement tips for shoplifting prevention, especially given that ORC costs retailers more than $700,000 for every $1 billion in sales on average

Merchants must constantly watch their backs and prioritize preventing anyone from stealing from their store. With the help of your employees, a security camera system, a high-tech point of sale system, and a panic alarm button, it can be possible to improve security, safety, and profitability at your establishment.

Many retailers might not know how to stop theft at their stores when faced with shoplifting, said Elie Y. Katz, president and CEO of National Retail Solutions (NRS). Installing security cameras at a store is advisable, especially when checking for suspicious activity.

“Employees, for instance, may give off the impression that they are trustworthy, when they are actually not acting ethically. A security camera can help monitor employees’ activity and customer interactions, even when the merchant is not around the store. Some POS companies offer a service wherein transaction data can be overlaid real-time onto the store’s DVR footage to deter and catch theft,” Katz said.

The security camera could be helpful in generally monitoring activities and keeping track of the store while recording. If an employee is caught, a security camera is an excellent tool for proving what an employee did. Retailers should ensure that the store is well lit and that the cameras face key locations, particularly the register area.

The store’s POS system can track a merchant’s inventory and sales, and has a cashiers/users login feature to show who was on the POS system at any given time. An employee time clock feature on the POS can also be very helpful for knowing who was on shift and when.

In addition to installing security cameras, integrating the POS data with the footage and implementing a panic alarm button, retailers can also post signs around the store indicating that it is being monitored. Customers and employees who know they are being watched are less likely to steal from the store. Items that are more prone to being stolen should be kept behind the counter, where only employees will be able to access them.  cstoredecisions.com

Crime Surge Driven By COVID's Court Shutdown?
The Cause of the Crime Wave Is Hiding in Plain Sight

When the speed of repercussions drops, society loses a key deterrent against unlawful behavior.

Many states had drastically curtailed the operation of its courts in response to the pandemic. Some civil trials and preliminary hearings for criminal matters moved online, but actual criminal trials needed to be conducted in person in front of juries. Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque, suspended such trials for much of 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile, new cases kept pouring in, partly as a result of the surge in violent crime that accompanied the pandemic. The nation’s homicide rate rose by nearly 30 percent in 2020 and another 5 percent in 2021, essentially erasing two decades’ worth of declines in deadly violence.

Criminologists have offered several explanations for the increase, including the rise in gun sales early in the pandemic, changes in police behavior following the protests over the murder of George Floyd, and the social disruptions caused by closures of schools and interruptions in social services. But many people who work in criminal justice are zeroing in on another possible factor—the extended shutdown of so much of the court system, the institution at the heart of public order.

This could have led to more violence in a number of ways. Prosecutors confronted with a growing volume of cases decided not to take action against certain suspects, who went on to commit other crimes. Victims or witnesses became less willing to testify as time passed and their memories of events grew foggy, weakening cases against perpetrators. Suspects were denied substance-abuse treatment or other services that they would normally have accessed through the criminal-justice system, with dangerous consequences.

Above all, experts say, the shutdowns undermined the promise that crimes would be promptly punished. The theory that “swift, certain, and fair” consequences deter crimes is credited to the late criminologist Mark Kleiman. The idea is that it’s the speed of repercussions, rather than their severity, that matters most. By putting the justice system on hold for so long, many jurisdictions weakened that effect. In some cases, people were left to seek street justice in the absence of institutional justice. As Reygan Cunningham, a senior partner at the California Partnership for Safe Communities, put it, closing courts sent “a message that there are no consequences, and there is no help.”  theatlantic.com

Predicting Crime with 90% Accuracy
The never-ending quest to predict crime using AI

The practice has a long history of skewing police toward communities of color. But that hasn’t stopped researchers from building crime-predicting tools.

As the United States faces rising rates of violent crime, another research project emerged: A group of University of Chicago scientists unveiled an algorithm last month, boasting in a news release of its ability to predict crime with “90% accuracy.”

The algorithm identifies locations in major cities that it calculates have a high likelihood of crimes, like homicides and burglaries, occurring in the next week. The software can also evaluate how policing varies across neighborhoods in eight major cities in the United States, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

But using artificial intelligence to direct law enforcement rings alarm bells for many social justice scholars and criminologists, who cite a long history of such technology unfairly suggesting increased policing of Black and Latino people. Even one of the study’s authors acknowledges that an algorithm’s ability to predict crime is limited.

Predictive policing tools are built by feeding data — such as crime reports, arrest records and license plate images — to an algorithm, which is trained to look for patterns to predict where and when a certain type of crime will occur in the future.

But algorithms are only as good as the data they are fed. Historically, police data in the United States is biased, according to Southerland. Cops are more likely to arrest or charge someone with a crime in low-income neighborhoods dominated by people of color, a reality that doesn’t necessarily reflect where crime is happening, but where cops are spending their time.

To limit bias, the team omitted crime data such as marijuana arrests, traffic stops or low-level petty crimes, because research shows Black and Latino people are more often targeted for those types of offenses. Instead, they gave the algorithm data on homicides, assaults and batteries, along with property crimes like burglaries and motor vehicle thefts. washingtonpost.com

LAPD Issues Crime & Robbery Alert
Latest smash-and-grab in LA highlights increasing risk of robbery, violent crime
Thieves have targeted yet another high-end retailer on the Westside of Los Angeles, this time using a van to smash through a window at a Chanel store. The smash-and-grab, in addition to a series of other robberies, has police warning residents and shoppers in the area to take precautions.

The LAPD recently issued a crime alert for residents and visitors to the city of Los Angeles. In particular the department is warning about follow-home robberies in which suspects see individuals wearing expensive jewelry, including watches and necklaces, and follow them home from nightclubs and high-end restaurants in Los Angeles.

The department issued a series of tips, including being aware of your surroundings, being cautious about displaying expensive jewelry and reporting suspicious activity to the police.

"We believe there's a component here of helping to prevent these, by being mindful of your surroundings, recognizing that currently there's a troubling trend of suspects targeting individuals with expensive jewelry, expensive items of clothing and purses, and the risk to those individuals' safety is real," LAPD Chief Michel Moore said.

Last week, LAPD officers exchanged gunfire with robbery suspects who tried to steal an expensive watch near Melrose and Fairfax. An officer was shot in the leg. Many residents say they are distressed by what appears to be an increase in violent crime and robberies." abc7.com

Starbucks Crime Closures Continues to Make Headlines
Opinion: How ‘abdication’ on crime, homelessness is killing businesses

Excerpts from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s warning that governments’ “abdication” of dealing with crime and mental illness means the company is closing 16 profitable stores in the Democratic-run cities of Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland and DC.

I don’t want to spend too much time on what’s going on in the country, and how America has become unsafe. But you’ve all read the press release about how we’re beginning to close stores — that are not unprofitable. But we’re closing stores as a result of [meetings with store managers and retail partners].

In all of those sessions, it has shocked me that one of the primary concerns that our retail partners have is their own personal safety. And then we heard the stories that go along with it about what happens in our bathrooms. The issue of mental illness. The issues of homelessness. And the issues of crime.

And 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 — and this is just the beginning, there are going to be many more.

And I must say, in my view, at the local, state and federal level, these governments — across the country — and leaders, mayors and governors and city councils, have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime and addressing mental illness. We’re going to have to refine and transform and modernize many of the things we do to meet the needs of our customers in a very changing operating environment in which customer behavior is changing. nypost.com

Data Shows How Most Mass Shooting Attacks Are Stopped
Mass Shootings Continue to Take Center Stage in America
Gun violence in the United States took center stage yet again yesterday. In one incident on 17 July, a man began shooting at a mall in Greenwood, Indiana, killing three people and wounding two others before a bystander ended the incident by shooting and killing the assailant. In other news, the Texas House of Representatives released a report on its investigation into the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting in May; an Associated Press headline summed up the report: “Two Decades of Shooter Response Strategy Ignored in Uvalde.”

Bystander Intervention

In Indiana, Jonathan Sapirman “entered the mall and walked into a bathroom, where he spent about an hour before he emerged and opened fire,” the AP reported. Authorities said he may have been assembling an AR-15-style rifle he had taken into the mall in backpack. He had more than 100 rounds of ammunition with him, but managed to fire only 24 in approximately two minutes before Elisjsha Dicken, who was shopping at the mall with his girlfriend, used his handgun to shoot and kill Sapirman.

Several news outlets covered the rarity of active shooters that are shot and killed by bystanders at the scene. “The Greenwood incident is unique, however, because it became one of the rare instances of an armed civilian successfully intervening to end a mass shooting,” The Washington Post reported.

In June, The New York Times used data from the Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center to perform a detailed analysis of how active shooter attacks. The analysis excluded domestic incidents and gang-related shootings, leaving a tally of 433 active shooting attacks from 2000 to 2021. Here is how those attacks ended:

● 26% of the time the assailant left the scene before police arrived.
● 23% of the time the assailant was shot by police.
● 17% of the time the assailant died by suicide before police arrived.
● 10% of the time the assailant was subdued by bystanders who did not use firearms
● 9% of the time the assailant died by suicide after police arrived.
● 8% of the time police subdued the attacker without using firearms.
● 3% of the time the assailant surrendered to police.
● 3% of the time citizen bystanders shot the assailant before police arrived.
● 2% of the time security guards or off-duty officers shot the assailant before police arrived. asisonline.org

The White House
FACT SHEET: President Biden’s Safer America Plan
The President believes we can and must do more to reduce crime and save lives. Today, President Biden is building on this progress with his Safer America Plan. President Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget requests a fully paid-for new investment of approximately $35 billion to support law enforcement and crime prevention – in addition to the President’s $2 billion discretionary request for these same programs. The plan he is releasing today outlines, for the first time, how this $37 billion will be used to save lives and make communities safer.

Funds the police and promotes effective prosecution of crimes affecting families today. The Safer America Plan will provide communities the resources they need to keep our streets safe, including by helping them hire and train 100,000 additional police officers for accountable community policing (nearly $13 billion over the next five years through the COPS Hiring Program) and setting aside dedicated funds for small law enforcement agencies.

To tackle organized retail theft, the plan calls on Congress to pass legislation to require online marketplaces, like Amazon, to verify third-party sellers’ information, and to impose liability on online marketplaces for the sale of stolen goods on their platforms. whitehouse.gov

Crime in Baltimore is rising

A recent poll found that crime was a ‘major concern’ for voters

The tension has echoes in races up and down the ballot nationally and comes against a backdrop of urgency and consequential bipartisan federal action on firearms last month. Tough-on-crime messaging, a hallmark of 1990s-era politics driven by fallout from the “war on Drugs,” is reverberating through midterm races across the country as cities face upticks in gun violence and homicide rates, squeezing Democrats caught between promises of advancing social justice and reducing violence.

Gun violence — a category that includes homicides and nonfatal shootings — jumped 10 percent in Baltimore since last July 2, while overall violent crime ticked up six percent, Baltimore Police Department data show. Meanwhile, the Anne Arundel police chief called for an “all-hands-on-deck approach” this month after a recent string of shootings in the suburbs of Baltimore. Montgomery County saw relatively flat rates of gun-related homicide and nonfatal shootings rose 75 percent.

“We’re watching crime that feels like it’s more brazen, and we’re watching … answers that feel more elusive,” said best-selling author and former nonprofit chief Wes Moore, one of three front-runners in the Democratic primary. washingtonpost.com

Social Workers Won’t Replace Police Anytime Soon
Violence, even from the mentally ill, demands a serious response.

Such programs don’t take much off the cops’ plate. The program in Eugene, Ore., covers only 17% of 911 calls, of which half concern welfare checks and transporting homeless people. New York’s program manages 16% of calls. One study of nine cities found that mental-health calls make up less than 2% of 911 calls.

It’s nice to have someone do wellness checks. But sending social workers into low-stakes situations is unlikely to reduce police shootings of the mentally ill. wsj.com

Retail theft crisis at an all-time high in Pennsylvania

US: 91.9M Cases - 1M Dead - 87.1M Recovered
Worldwide: 572.9M Cases - 6.3M Dead - 542.9M 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

The Latest Covid Surge
Latest COVID Variant is the Most Contagious Yet
Today, the most contagious form of Covid yet — the BA.5 subvariant — is spreading around the globe. “It looks as if we are unable to control it,” Dr. Charles Chiu of the University of California, San Francisco, told The Times.

In the U.S., cases have surged recently, as has the number of hospitalized patients with Covid (although some of them were admitted for other reasons and happened to test positive for the virus while in the hospital).

At the same time, I know that many readers aren’t sure how much attention to pay to Covid anymore. Most Americans are vaccinated, and the vaccines provide excellent protection against serious illness in a vast majority of cases. In a recent Times poll, fewer than 1 percent of Americans described Covid as the country’s most important problem. nytimes.com

Is Remote Work Bringing About the End of NYC's Central Business Districts?
Eric Adams says NYC ‘may not have central business districts anymore’ as remote work persists
Mayor Eric Adams is softening his tone on in-person work, admitting Monday that the Big Apple “may not have central business districts anymore” as white collar workers increasingly embrace working from home.

“What we want to do post-COVID is now define, ‘what does the work week look like,’ and how do we build local ecosystems in our community,” Hizzoner said during a Q&A session at a tech event. “We may not have central business districts anymore. I don’t know that, but we can’t stumble into this.”

Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul and other New York politicians have repeatedly urged white collar workers to return to offices, warning that restaurants and other service businesses in neighborhoods like Midtown and the Financial District will go out of business without commuters.

While Adams took a softer tone toward remote work during his comments on Monday at a Tech: NYC and Center for an Urban Future event marking the release of a new tech impact report, the mayor reiterated his concerns about remote work’s impact on service workers.

Asked for further comment on Tuesday, the mayor’s spokesman Fabien Levy said, “It sounded to us like the mayor was clear that the economy currently depends on many New Yorkers returning to in-person work. I think, as these comments reflect, he’s being honest about the challenges, but he’s also being honest about how crucial it is for our economic recovery that most New Yorkers return to work in the office.”

Big Apple workers who want to stay home have cited concerns about rising crime, including the apparently random murder of a Goldman Sachs employee on the Q train in May. New York office occupancy stood at just 41.2% at the end of June and has remained relatively stagnant throughout the summer, according to building swipe data reported by the Wall Street Journal. nypost.com

The Unexpected Benefit of COVID Era Remote Work
Facebook’s workforce grew more diverse when it embraced remote work
Facebook was one of an array of companies to dramatically restructure remote work during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing employees to continue working from home while they avoided the spread of covid-19. Now, Facebook Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams said there was an unexpected benefit to that workplace overhaul: it helped the company recruit and retain workers from underrepresented groups.

In the United States, remote job offers were more likely to be filled by people of color, people with disabilities and veterans, according to the company’s annual diversity report. Around the world, candidates who accepted remote job offers were also more likely to be women, the company found.

Among existing employees, people from underrepresented groups were more likely to opt to work remotely, according to Williams. She said the company is still studying why people from underrepresented groups are choosing remote work, but speculated some workers are seeking to locate where they feel more at home. washingtonpost.com

Indoor mask rules expected next week as L.A. coronavirus wave worsens
Los Angeles County is poised to impose new indoor mask rules next week as data show the hyper-infectious BA.5 Omicron subvariant is pushing coronavirus case counts higher and sending increasing numbers of people to the hospital.

Why it feels like practically everyone has COVID right now

As remote work options rise, so does interest in nomad life