Securitas Advances Partnership with the LPF

SES advances to Master Level Partnership to Support LP professionals

Securitas Electronic Security, Inc. has advanced its partnership with the Loss Prevention Foundation (LPF) by announcing support as a new Master Level Partner. SES has been a long-time supporter of the LPF. This new partnership level demonstrates SES’s commitment to the retail asset protection and loss prevention industry by offering clients the education and benefits of the LPF. The Master Level Partnership secures numerous certification course scholarships and complimentary LPF memberships to be distributed to loss prevention professionals, helping them secure the benefits of the LPF.

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The U.S. Crime Surge
The Retail Impact

SFPD Data Article & Yesterday's Op-Ed Miss The Reality of SF's ORC Crisis

ORC & Robbery's Impacting San Francisco's DA
Shoplifting prosecutions down 37% in his first year in office

San Francisco’s progressive DA likely headed for recall
A campaign to oust one of the nation’s most progressive prosecutors will likely go to San Francisco voters next year after recall supporters submitted far more signatures than needed to qualify for the ballot on Friday.

Three days before the Oct. 25 deadline, organizers of a campaign to recall San Francisco’s criminal justice reform-minded district attorney Chesa Boudin submitted 83,000 signatures — 32,000 more than are required.

Boudin, 41, ran for DA in 2019 on a platform of promising to end mass incarceration and boost non-prosecution diversion programs. Within his first few months in office, Boudin made good on his campaign pledges. He eliminated cash bail for defendants with the goal of making pre-trial release determinations based on risk instead of wealth. He ordered the DA’s office to stop applying sentencing enhancements based on gang affiliations, arguing that they contribute to racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

He also directed the office to stop applying California’s Three Strikes Law, which he said helped fuel mass incarceration. Additionally, he announced a halt in prosecuting contraband possession cases if they result from a stop for a minor traffic violation, based on a belief that “pretexual” stops erode trust in law enforcement and contribute to racial disparities.

But in a city with high rates of property crimes, overdose deaths, homelessness and mental health problems that many attribute to the prevalence of illegal drugs, Boudin’s critics argue that his policies have made the city less safe.

Boudin’s detractors were quick to blame him and his policies for the deaths of two women, 60-year-old Elizabeth Platt and 27-year-old Hanako Abe, who were killed in a hit-and-run, after a store robbery, on Dec. 31, 2020, by a parolee. The driver, Troy McAlister, was out on parole and had been arrested for a series of property crimes before the fatal incident, but Boudin had not filed charges against him.

According the Chronicle, McAlister was arrested in July 2015 on suspicion of robbing a store in San Francisco at gunpoint. Prior to that incident, he also had three other felony convictions, including one for robbery and another for attempted carjacking.

San Francisco has also made headlines in recent months over a viral video of a man brazenly shoplifting in a Walgreens store while ignoring a security guard and reports that the pharmacy chain is closing multiple stores in the city, citing the high cost of retail theft. While some have challenged that narrative and questioned Walgreens’ true motives for closing stores, data shows that Boudin has prosecuted fewer shoplifting cases than his predecessor, George Gascón. Boudin prosecuted 44% of shoplifting cases in 2020 compared to 70% prosecuted Gascón in 2019, according to the San Francisco Examiner. courthousenews.com

SF DA Disregarding Laws & Court Decisions He Doesn't Like
San Francisco prosecutors quit progressive DA Chesa Boudin's office, join recall effort

At least 50 lawyers, a third of the attorneys, have been fired or quit since Boudin took office as district attorney in Jan. 2020.

Two San Francisco prosecutors have quit their jobs in the district attorney’s office of a progressive prosecutor and joined an effort to recall him.

Prosecutors Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain told KNTV they have stepped down from their posts in San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office due to his lack of commitment to prosecuting crimes.

"Chesa has a radical approach that involves not charging crime in the first place and simply releasing individuals with no rehabilitation and putting them in positions where they are simply more likely to re-offend," Jenkins said in the interview. "Being an African American and Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system needs a lot of work, but when you are a district attorney, your job is to have balance."

Du Bain added that he believed Boudin "disregards the laws that he doesn't like, and he disregards the court decisions that he doesn't like to impose his own version of what he believes is just – and that's not the job of the district attorney."

"The office was headed in such the wrong direction that the best thing I could do was to join the effort to recall Chesa Boudin as district attorney," Du Bain said.

Open-air drug markets and homelessness, coupled with upticks in blatant daylight shoplifting, residential and commercial burglaries, shootings and other violent crimes, have left citizens "starting to wake up to the reality that’s now become their nightmare as far as public safety and crime goes," Montoya said. foxnews.com

Editor's Note: This is exactly what needs to happen nationwide in a number of cities where the progressive DA's need to be replaced with DA's that are willing to do their jobs. As they are part of the law enforcement arm of the criminal justice system and not the legislators making the laws. Just my thoughts. -Gus Downing

San Fran. City Supervisor Calls For Coordinated Response to ORC

"Retailers Have Simply Stopped Calling the Cops."
'Data shows Chesa Boudin prosecutes fewer shoplifters than predecessor'

‘We made an intentional decision to prioritize crimes involving violence, injury to human beings and use of weapons’

As videos of brazen retail thefts in San Francisco draw national attention, The Examiner has obtained new data showing that District Attorney Chesa Boudin is prosecuting far fewer shoplifting cases than his predecessor.

The numbers show the prosecution rate for shoplifting cases involving a misdemeanor petty theft charge for a loss of $950 or less fell under Boudin, from 70 percent under former District Attorney George Gascon in 2019 to 44 percent in 2020 and 50 percent as of mid-June 2021.

Prosecutors filed charges in 116 of 266 cases presented by police involving petty theft in 2020, compared to 450 of 647 cases in 2019, according to the data provided by the District Attorney’s Office.

On the other hand, the prosecution rate for certain organized retail theft cases remained between 81 and 84 percent under both Gascon and Boudin between 2019 and 2021.

The office charged 35 of the 43 organized retail theft cases presented in 2020, compared to 21 of the 25 cases in 2019.

While the crime trend seen in viral videos of thieves brazenly stealing goods from Walgreens or Neiman Marcus is not borne out by police data — reports of shoplifting have actually dropped since 2019 and remained relatively consistent over the last decade — Boudin critics say some retailers have simply stopped calling the cops.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that San Francisco has long been an epicenter of property crimes that are rarely solved by police, meaning the district attorney only has the opportunity to charge a fraction of the crimes committed. But critics say the numbers show Boudin is contributing to the problem.

The data comes with some caveats & "Boudin has made San Francisco a “magnet for criminals.”

Continue Reading

Chesa Boudin's free pass for shoplifters drives San Francisco store owners to lock all goods behind glass case

America's Murder Surge Continues
2020's historic rise in homoicides has continued in 2021

2020 saw a historic rise in homicides in the U.S. — the vast majority committed with a gun — and the upward trend is continuing in 2021.

Why it matters: The murder surge represents a sharp break from decades of reductions in violent, gun-driven crime in the U.S., and experts are divided on what caused the increase — and therefore, what to do about it.

Curbing the rise in shootings will require addressing the root causes of violence, while mending social trust between the communities most at risk and the police.

By the numbers: Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics released earlier this month indicates that the murder rate rose 30% between 2019 and 2020. That's the highest increase in recorded history.

That puts the U.S. on pace for close to a 50% increase in murders compared to two years ago, says Aaron Chalfin, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "It's wiped out maybe 20 years of progress in reducing homicides."

What to watch: Violent crime itself can spread like a virus, as one murder leads to others, notes John Roman of NORC at the University of Chicago. "There's a lot of trauma, and a lot of desire for retaliation," he says. "Retaliation creates its own cycle, and we're still in the middle of that cycling." axios.com

The Crime Surge Blame Game
Minnesota progressive lawmaker blames 'dysfunctional' police for Minneapolis violent crime spike
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., blamed police for the recent rise in crime in Minneapolis, accusing the city's officers of not fulfilling their oath of office.

"What we must also recognize is that the reduction in policing currently in our city and the lawlessness that is happening is due to two things," Omar said during a town hall event Saturday in Minneapolis.

One of them, she said, is that "the police have chosen to not fulfill their oath of office and to provide the public safety they are owed to the citizens they serve."

The lawmaker's comments come as violent crime has surged in Minnesota over the last year, rising 17% in total while setting records for murders. Omar's approach to crime includes backing a Nov. 2 ballot measure to replace the entire Minneapolis police department with a "Department of Public Safety." The measure would remove the requirement that the city have a minimum number of officers based on the city's population.

Minneapolis, the state's largest city, has had to fight the surge while its police department suffers from staffing and morale problems after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in the city, something some say has fueled the crime surge. Others have pointed to a rise in unemployment and other stresses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that other large cities have experienced similar issues. foxnews.com

Progressives' optimism for large reforms dwindles
From voting rights and immigration reform to criminal justice and student debt relief, Democrats say the party is at risk of seeing its majorities evaporate by failing to deliver on public promises, a projection that has prompted fear and finger-pointing among President Biden’s most loyal base.

Debate has all but disappeared and is in a bucket with other policies that many Democrats believe would be nice to have, but not essential, like a federal minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, which didn’t pass Congress, and certain criminal justice reforms.

"There’s a dissonance with the pronouncements that were made during the campaign,” said Donald Cameron Clark, Jr., a lawyer and criminal justice activist. “They are frustrated if not handcuffed by the political realities of Congress.” thehill.com

The Great Resignation Impacting Prosecutors Offices
National Trend: Prosecutors Are Resigning Across The Country in Alarming Numbers
The quitting mirrors national trends of a post-pandemic exodus of office workers that economists are calling “The Great Resignation.” Departures are weakening prosecutors’ offices around the county. District attorneys report that their ranks have fallen by as much as a third, said David LaBahn, president of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

They’re walking out for private practice or the suburbs, where they have lighter workloads and a chance for higher pay. Stress and the demands of the job have always brought turnover, but the coronavirus pandemic worsened matters.

“We are reaching a crisis,” LaBahn said. “For somebody to have 120 active felonies, that is a crushing caseload. If that individual were to try those 120 cases, how many years would that take? That person is working in triage.”

City offices such as public works, police and fire are grappling with vacancies, too.

He worries resignations across the country will bring losses in courtrooms. Because of the “double jeopardy” principle, homicide prosecutors don’t get second chances.

“If somebody obviously guilty gets off,” he said, “what does that do for the trust and legitimacy of the criminal justice system?” baltimoresun.com

Hate Crimes Surge by 16%
2020 saw highest number of hate crimes in two decades, updated FBI data shows
The number of hate crimes reported in 2020 was the highest recorded in two decades, according to updated FBI data released Monday. The FBI revealed its amended hate crime statistics for fiscal year 2020 following a technical submission error that had excluded some data from Ohio in the agency's original release in August. The FBI has since addressed the technical challenge in the state's reporting system.

Law enforcement agencies submitted reports for 8,263 criminal incidents and 11,129 related offenses motivated by biases toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. The updated release reflects an increase in more than 500 hate crime incidents with the inclusion of the new data.

The total number of criminal incidents represents a 16% increase from 2019 and the highest number of hate crime incidents recorded since 2001, a year that documented 9,730 incidents and a sharp rise in hate crimes directed toward perceived Muslim Americans in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

In 2020, updated data shows that 8,052 crimes motivated by one kind of bias, deemed single-bias incidents, took place and involved 11,126 victims. In 2019, the FBI recorded 7,103 single-bias incidents involving 8,552 victims total. In total, nearly 62% of hate crimes were tied to an individual's race nationwide, according to the FBI. cbsnews.com

71 Shot & 11 Killed - Another Bloody Weekend in America

● Chicago - 29 shot / 3 killed
● Atlanta – 12 shot / 2 Killed
● Houston – 7 shot / 4 Killed
● Jacksonville, FL – 6 shot / 1 Killed
● Baltimore – 4 shot / 1 Killed
● Cincinnati, OH - 4 shot / 0 killed
● Dallas – 3 shot / 0 Killed
● Anne Arundel County, MD: 3 shot / 0 Killed
● Toledo, OH – 2 shot / 0 Killed
● Boston – 1 shot / 0 Killed
 

COVID Update

414.3M Vaccinations Given