FBI Prepared to Take Action Amid Theft Wave
How law enforcement is trying to stop mob retail thefts
With in-store customers expected to return in droves for the holiday shopping season, law enforcement agencies are moving to halt a wave of organized "smash-and-grab" crimes at retailers across the US.

In Chicago, Los Angeles and other major cities, police departments are increasing patrols at retailers targeted by mobs of thieves in brazen raids. In Northern California, district attorneys formed an alliance to prosecute organized theft rings. At the federal level, the FBI said it is in "close contact" with local law enforcement investigating such cases and prepared to take further action.

'Instilling fear in merchants, customers and the wider community'

Seven Bay Area district attorneys -- in San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties -- announced last week an alliance that also included law enforcement and state agencies to combat organized retail theft.

Each office agreed to assign a prosecutor to target the thieves, including fencing rings and people who purchase the stolen goods, according to a joint statement.

Law enforcement presence increasing at retail locations

Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered "saturation patrols" by the California Highway Patrol near major retail sites in the state during the holiday season in response to the organized thefts.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a Democrat, on Monday blamed cuts in the number of city police officers for the wave of smash-and-grab thefts as well as a spike in gun violence. Schaaf said the pandemic interrupted the city's recruitment and training of new officers. She called for greater coordination by law enforcement at all levels to combat retail thefts.

Chicago Police Chief of Operations Brian McDermott said the department had increased patrols in the central business district and other locations and tracking "stolen cars and vehicles typically used in these type of crimes."

FBI 'prepared to take a more active role'

An FBI spokesperson told CNN Monday that federal agents are monitoring the spate of brazen thefts and remain in close contact with local police. "Should information come to our attention that constitutes a federal crime, we are prepared to take a more active role," the spokesperson said. cnn.com

Florida Launches Statewide ORC Task Force
Florida AG Moody launching statewide task force to take on organized retail theft

Florida database aiming to spot trends, identify suspects and take down organized retail theft rings

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is launching a statewide task force to take on organized retail theft in an effort to bridge the gap between retailers, law enforcement and prosecutors as businesses in states across the nation report nearly a 70% increase in theft over the past year.

Moody is launching an interactive database Thursday to help spot trends, identify suspects and take down organized retail theft rings. The database – Florida Organized Retail Crime Exchange (FORCE) – will create a space for shareable, searchable information on thousands of incidents of theft statewide.

Moody’s office and Florida’s Retail Federation will operate the database, which will be available to retailers and law enforcement agencies by invitation that complete specialized training.

Moody’s office said the FORCE database will give retailers the ability to upload data about recent retail theft occurrences, such as items stolen, suspect description, method of operation, and vehicle identification – making it easier to identify thefts and potentially strengthening charges and stiffening penalties.

Once information is uploaded to FORCE, other retailers and law enforcement agencies will have access to the information, which Moody’s office says would provide a "greater ability to link related crimes and perpetrators."

"We are seeing lawlessness and out-of-control mobs preying on businesses and consumers in major cities outside of Florida, and we will not allow these crime sprees to harm Floridians or our retailers," Moody told Fox News. "While we have done a good job of catching and prosecuting major retail theft rings in Florida, the threat is growing, and we must evolve with it."

Moody added that FORCE will "share information on retail crime throughout the state and stop these criminals before they cause more harm." foxnews.com

New York Times Op-Ed on ORC Surge
The Times promotes the INFORM Consumers Act as a solution to latest theft surge

Retail Theft Has Gotten Very Organized
Organized retail crime can be dangerous to shoppers and store employees as well as financially damaging to retailers, particularly smaller ones. In addition, it causes stores to raise prices, which harms customers.

Fortunately, there is a solution, and it doesn’t involve turning stores into fortresses or security guards into combatants. The solution is to remove the profit motive by shutting down the resale of stolen goods over the internet. If criminals know they can’t sell the stuff they steal, they won’t steal it in the first place.

Congress is moving in the right direction. On Nov. 17, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved and sent to the full House a bill that would require online marketplaces to verify the identities of high-volume third-party sellers.

The bill, which is called the INFORM Consumers Act, is sponsored by Representatives Janice Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, and Gus Bilirakis, Republican of Florida. By forcing organized retail criminals to verify who they are, the bill would discourage them from selling and thus exposing themselves to prosecution.

The Schakowsky-Bilirakis bill has earned support from groups including the Coalition to Protect America’s Small Sellers (which includes eBay and Etsy) that had opposed an earlier version of the INFORM Consumers Act sponsored by Senators Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana.

When it comes to third-party sellers, the 800-pound gorilla is Amazon, whose net sales are running at a rate of more than $400 billion a year. The company says that slightly more than half of the items sold on its platform are sold by third parties, not Amazon itself. The Buy Safe America Coalition, which represents retailers and manufacturers, charges that Amazon “has had an alarming history of failing to address counterfeits and stolen products.”

I interviewed Stuart Green, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark, about the effort in Congress to stamp out organized retail crime by going after complicit resellers — or “fences,” as they’re known. He was all in favor. “It’s a classic cycle where the ability to sell a stolen good creates demand for more stolen goods and gives incentives to the thieves,” he said. “If the thieves don’t have an outlet for the stolen goods, they don’t have any incentive to steal the goods.”

Green said that even though online platforms are working to root out crime, they continue to benefit, however unintentionally, from sales of stolen goods. “To me,” he said, “that’s a classic case of a market failure.” nytimes.com

Armed Guards & Plywood Instead of Holiday Lights & Garland
‘There’s nothing festive about ... boarded-up storefronts’: Union Square retailers look different this holiday season
As San Francisco approached the critical December shopping month, instead of holiday lights and Santa Claus decorations, dozens of downtown retailers greeted shoppers with plywood-encased storefronts and armed guards in the wake of mass retail thefts in Union Square two weeks ago.

Around a half-dozen stores in the Union Square area were boarded up on Tuesday, including the Louis Vuitton store and others that sustained damage during the robberies. Other luxury stores such as Gucci, which Mayor London Breed said had an existing security gate system and wasn’t damaged in previous robberies, had a guard outside as well.

It’s a stark contrast from previous years when December in Union Square was marked by windows full of holiday ornamentation and the seasonal enticement of products that could fit under Christmas trees.

San Francisco police cars parked at intervals around the square, with officers sitting inside or leaning against the vehicles, batons in belts. Fuentes asked an employee flanked by a security guard outside Louis Vuitton whether he could come in to shop, but was told he needed an appointment with an hour’s notice, so he moved on.

Retail experts said the fear of more crime amid the critical holiday shopping season and boarded-up windows could deter visitors who don’t feel safe, particularly tourists. It could push more customers to online shopping, especially if they need to book reservations to shop in person.

Security costs make it even harder for retailers who struggled financially during the pandemic to survive. Around-the-clock, trained, unarmed security can cost $30,000 a month, while armed, off-duty police officers cost over $100 per hour to hire.

San Francisco is far from the only city grappling with organized retail crime and its tangential effects. New York and Chicago have both seen mass robberies, and DeRose said he saw boarded-up stores on a recent Chicago trip after robberies as well. But San Francisco and Oakland were ranked as the second-worst region for organized retail crime in 2020 behind only Los Angeles in a National Retail Federation survey. sfchronicle.com

San Francisco Retail 'Fencing' Legislation
New S.F. proposal would try to crack down on stolen goods resold on city streets

Supervisor Ahsha Safai wants to create legislation that would require street vendors get permits to crack down on reselling of stolen goods.

As San Francisco leaders and officials struggle to respond to the escalating debate about retail theft in the city, one supervisor wants to target the street vendors who resell stolen goods.

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí is working on legislation that would create a permitting process for street vendors with the goal of cracking down on “fencing,” the practice of buying and selling ill-gotten merchandise.

Safaí said Tuesday goods shoplifted from stores or stolen from homes are often resold on the city’s streets - especially in UN Plaza or around BART stations in the Mission. He didn’t have data on how often this occurs, but said residents have recovered their stolen belongings in these areas. Safaí said “the need to stop street peddling of stolen goods” came out of an organized crime retail working group comprised of law enforcement and retailers, and is supported by business districts.

“We see a tremendous amount of goods that are sold on our streets without a license in San Francisco,” Safaí said during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “It’s an important piece of legislation that would seek to disrupt and end the selling of stolen goods.”

The move comes more than a week after coordinated crews of thieves plundered Union Square stores and drew national media attention to San Francisco.

Safaí latched on to the issue of retail theft earlier this year when major chains, including Walgreens, publicly blamed organized theft for their losses and closures. More recently, police data did not support the narrative that Walgreens said it was closing five more stores because of rampant theft, although official police data on shoplifting only tells part of the story given inconsistent reporting from retailers. sfchronicle.com

Will Chicago Become the Next San Francisco?
Retailers Worry That Repeated Organized Thefts Could Scare Shoppers Away From Mag Mile, Other Districts This Holiday Season

“We don’t want to be become the headlines, like San Francisco,” said Rob Karr, president and chief executive officer of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association

Customers were pushed and shoved this week as a group of thieves ransacked the Burberry store on the Magnificent Mile – in the latest hit in a number of similar mass-thefts at high-end Chicago stores.

CBS 2’s Tara Molina asked Tuesday how the crime is affecting the holiday shopping season.

That shopping season is now in full swing. The Magnificent Mile decked out and lit up for the season, and so are the city’s other prime retail districts – with garland, holly, and festive lights.

The concern is that the retailers on Michigan Avenue and elsewhere will not see the same crowds they have in years past – because of these continued crimes.

This in turn follows a posted warning from Chicago Police about a number of other nearby robberies, where organized groups are breaking glass to steal whatever they can get their hands on when the stores were closed.

“We don’t want to be become the headlines, like San Francisco,” said Rob Karr, president and chief executive officer of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, “but we’re pushing in that direction.”

In San Francisco and nearby Bay Area communities, organized theft rings forced officials to change traffic patterns around high-end stores. chicago.cbslocal.com

Photos show SF stores' boarded-up windows after wave of smash-and-grabs

Sonora-area CHP to participate in statewide organized retail theft crackdown

Washington DC records its 200th homicide - highest in nearly two decades

Walnut Creek to Hold Special Council Meeting to Address Retail Theft

US: 49.5M Cases - 805K Dead - 39.3M Recovered
Worldwide: 263.9M Cases - 5.2M Dead - 238.2M Recovered

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Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 328  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 542
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Omicron Reaches the U.S.
First confirmed US case of Omicron coronavirus variant detected in California
The United States' first confirmed case of the Omicron coronavirus variant has been identified in California.

In a White House news briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the case was in an individual who traveled from South Africa on November 22 -- before travel restrictions were in place -- and tested positive for Covid-19 on November 29.

That individual, Fauci said, is self-quarantining and close contacts have tested negative for the coronavirus so far.

The person was fully vaccinated and is experiencing "mild symptoms, which are improving at this point," Fauci said. Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's director of public health, said the person had not had a booster shot. cnn.com

Will Omicron Variant Drive Retail Vaccine Mandates?
Op-Ed: Omicron Should Push Retailers to Deploy Vaccine Mandates

Merchants know that Covid vaccinations save lives. They should act like it.

The omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus has already appeared in the U.S. soon, but the country’s retailers still aren’t interested in doing the one thing that would protect millions of workers before it arrives: mandate vaccinations.

It’s the holiday shopping season, of course. Retailers that depend on this stretch to ring up strong annual sales worry that mandates will turn off a big portion of the 665,000 temporary workers they have to hire to move goods. Those temps would supplement about 32 million other more permanent U.S. retail employees. As science and data have already taught us, unvaccinated workers are more vulnerable than vaccinated ones to Covid’s predations. By extension, customers are also safer being served by vaccinated workers.

“We all agree with the premise that vaccines are good and vaccines save lives,” Stephanie Martz, a senior official with a large trade group, the National Retail Federation, told the New York Times last week. “But by the same token, you can’t just say, ‘OK, make it so.’”

Why not? If they wanted, retailers could certainly say, “Make it so.” If they really believe vaccines save lives, they should embrace every measure available to ensure their use. Instituting mandates is a clear demonstration of that commitment. Retailers don’t want to make it so because they have bottom lines to look after and fear worker shortages. That fear is understandable, and retailers have asked the Biden administration to allow them to wait until late winter — after the holiday shopping rush — before adopting the Labor Department’s new testing and vaccination mandates for workplaces with 100 or more employees.

But even if retailers’ fear of alienating workers is understandable, it may not be rational. Some companies that have already instituted mandates and then stayed the course haven’t experienced mass worker departures. United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. are just a couple of those success stories. Governors and mayors in New York and Illinois have had similar results after they instituted mandates for their workforces. The biggest of the big-box retailers, Walmart Inc., has said that “the overwhelming majority” of workers it required to get vaccinated did so. bloomberg.com

35% of Hiring Managers Reject Unvaccinated Applicants
It’s Starting Already – Vax Status Now Part of Resume

A new survey found 35% of hiring managers will automatically reject candidates who don't provide vaccine status on their resumes.

Those of us who are vaccinated have learned to keep our cards with us or at least keep a photo on our phones. But has anyone thought of including that data on a resume? Well, it seems hiring managers have.

In an October survey conducted by ResumeOk of 1,379 hiring managers in the U.S., 35% will automatically reject candidates who do not write their COVID-19 vaccine status on their resumes.

The survey also found other variations with 39% of hiring managers preferring to see the candidate’s vax status on their resume while 26% said that the status wasn’t part of their hiring decision.

And 86% of hiring managers are more likely to call candidates who provide vaccine information.

This, of course, makes sense given the pending mandate that all companies employing more than 100 people must mandate vaccination. Before the mandate, only 32% of hiring managers had started to prioritize hiring vaccinated candidates. As of today, 63% of U.S. companies have mandates already on the books. ehstoday.com

The Debate Over Hazard Pay for Frontline Workers
Who’s a hero? Some states, cities still debating hazard pay
State and local governments have struggled to determine who among the many workers who braved the raging coronavirus pandemic before vaccines became available should qualify: Only government workers, or private employees, too? Should it go to a small pool of essential workers like nurses or be spread around to others, including grocery store workers?

“It’s a bad position for us to be in because you have your local government trying to pick winners and losers, if you would, or recipients and nonrecipients. And hence by default, you’re saying importance versus not important,” said Jason Levesque, the Republican mayor of Auburn, Maine, where officials have not yet decided who will receive hazard pay from the city’s American Rescue Plan funds.

A year and a half into the pandemic, such decisions have taken on political implications for some leaders as unions lobby for expanded eligibility, with workers who end up being left out feeling embittered.

Interim federal rules published six months ago allow state and local COVID-19 recovery funds to be spent on premium pay for essential workers of up to $13 per hour, in addition to their regular wages. The amount cannot exceed $25,000 per employee. pbs.org

As More Cops Get Vaxxed, Chicago Drops Lawsuit Over Mandate
Chicago Drops Lawsuit Against Police Union Over Vaccine Mandate
Chicago has dropped its lawsuit against the city's largest police union over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The city sued the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge 7 in October, accusing its president, John Catanzara, of encouraging an "illegal work stoppage or strike."

Catanzara had encouraged officers to not comply with a mandate that required city employees to report their vaccination status by October 15 or be put on "no-pay status". The union countered with its own lawsuit against the city in a bid to suspend the policy.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she had directed officials to dismiss the lawsuit against the union without prejudice, saying it was unnecessary as more officers have complied. newsweek.com

Meta scrubbed a fake scientist's account that spread bogus COVID-19 claims
In total, Facebook removed 524 Facebook accounts, 20 pages, four Groups and 86 Instagram accounts a part of the network.

Moderna exec says company could have Omicron booster ready in March