ADT Completes The Acquisition Of Sunpro Solar And Introduces New Division, ADT Solar

ADT Inc., the most trusted brand in smart home and small business security, has announced that it has completed the acquisition of Sunpro Solar.

With the acquisition of Sunpro Solar, ADT is introducing ADT Solar, which will provide customers with rooftop solar and energy storage solutions, to increase their energy independence and help them save money on their energy expenses. Sunpro currently operates in 22 US states, and ADT Solar plans to expand to more markets across the U.S.A.  Read more here
 

ORC Making All the Trade Publications & News Outlets Nationwide
Getting More Press Coverage Now Than Ever in History

As 'Smash and Grab' Spate Continues, Retail CEOs Turn to Congress for Help
Aside from it being their busy season, what do the CEOs of AutoZone, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Target and over a dozen other mega-retail leaders have in common?

In a word, theft. But more specifically, a growing concern and frustration with the recent rise of brazen, organized, “smash and grab” mass robbery attacks on their stores — and now, a shared desire for Congress to step in and do something about it.

The ongoing spate of organized, high-profile and often televised thefts is on a different level — to the point where 21 CEOs from some of the nation’s biggest retailers have asked for help from the federal government.

That fix comes in the form of the INFORM Act, (the Integrity, Notification and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers Act), a bipartisan bill filed in both chambers that aims to modernize consumer protection laws — and in turn, to protect consumers, communities and retailers from the re-selling ripple effects of stolen goods.

In short, the CEOs said that the elimination of the end market — the black market where stolen goods are readily being bought and sold — will disincentivize the mass theft that is being done to supply it.

After all, no one knows better than retail CEOs that if you disrupt supply and distribution, you kill the business.

While admitting that there is no simple answer to stopping organized retail crime or the sale of counterfeits, the retail chiefs stressed that transparency is key to crushing this growing problem.

Without naming names, they blamed the “lack of transparency” on “particular third-party marketplaces” for the wave of criminal activity being able to grow and fester.

The plea for federal help comes at a time when several CEOs, including Best Buy’s Corie Barry, have been blunt about the impact this situation has had on their customers and the morale of their already constrained workforces, as well as their bottom lines.

“This is a real issue that hurts and scares real people,” Barry, a 22-year Best Buy veteran who has held the CEO role since June 2019, said during the company’s Q3 earnings call in late November.

Read the full story: ‘Smash and Grab’ Theft Trend Scares Shoppers and Workers, Threatens Mall Traffic pymnts.com

Retail Wire Friday: Published RILA's Letter
Retail CEOs Call on Congress to Modernize Consumer Protection Laws to Address Surge of Retail Crime


Online Marketplaces & Street Vendors Fueling Retail Theft
New SF Proposals Target Resale Markets Where Shoplifting Rings Sell Goods

Online marketplaces and illegal street vendors are where organized retail theft rings unload their ill-gotten goods, and two new laws before the SF Board of Supervisors would hope to squeeze those markets dry.

Underground, illicit market is not some secret criminal syndicate, but often a platform that you, too, might use regularly — an online marketplace like Amazon, eBay, or Facebook Marketplace.

“The biggest reason why [retail theft] is more lucrative today is online marketplaces,” loss prevention software director Tony Sheppard told the Chronicle. “That’s where the bulk of the stolen products end up. With many online marketplaces, [sellers] don’t have to give valid information. You can say your name is Daffy Duck and open an account.”

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman wants to go after that practice on a local level. On Tuesday, the board of supervisors unanimously passed his piece of legislation urging Congress to pass the INFORM ACT, which would require online marketplaces to verify who sellers are, and allow buyers to verify who the sellers are. CVS, Target, and Walgreens have been begging Congress to pass the strictest version of this law possible.

Meanwhile, Supervisor Ahsha Safai has a similar bill that targets street vendors, according to the Chronicle. The image above is what you can see every day outside the 24th Street BART station, as easily a dozen informal booths are selling items that you absolutely know are ripped from a CVS or Walgreens. You see the same thing every day near the 16th Street BART and Civic Center/UN Plaza, and Safai’s legislation (which has not yet gone before the full board) would create a permitting process that hopes to weed out the vendors selling stolen items. sfist.com

CA Retailers Demand Sacramento ORC Task Force
California Retailers Association pushes for an organized retail crime task force in Sacramento
As shoppers fill the stores, the California Retailers Association is looking to increase their organized retail crime task forces in Northern California, which are instrumental in going after organized crime rings.

"We've asked for money specifically for a Sacramento-focused ORC task force in addition to one for the Central Valley. In addition, we're asking for dedicated prosecutors who have a background in ORC," said Rachel Michelin, president of the California Retailers Association.

This comes as they point out an increase in retail thefts across the state — with the crimes happening across different cities and retail stores.

According to the National Retail Federation, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento are the highest retail-theft cities in California, and they are also in the top 10 cities in the country.

There are currently three task forces in the state. The Southern Division encompasses the greater Los Angeles area, the Border Division encompasses Orange and San Diego counties, and the Golden Gate Division encompasses the Bay Area. kcra.com

New NYC Mayor's Hopefully 'Get Tough on Crime' Position
NYC Mayor-Elect Eric Adams slams bail reform after tree arson suspect is released to ‘wreak havoc’
Mayor-elect Eric Adams on Thursday slammed a lenient bail reform law that allowed the unhinged firebug who allegedly torched the Fox News Christmas tree to be quickly set free.

The former cop said accused arsonist Craig Tamanaha, 49 — who was freed without bail early Thursday despite a lengthy rap sheet of low-level crimes — will likely “continue to wreak havoc” on the Big Apple due to the flawed law.

The New York bail reform law — which restricts judges from holding suspects of nearly all misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges after arraignment — fails to take into account repeat offenders, Adams said.

“This guy has clearly made a decision that, you know, I’m just going to continue to wreak havoc. Arson is a serious crime and judges should be able to look at the person in front of them on those violent actions and make a determination [on whether to hold him]. That is the missing piece,” Adams said at a press conference in Brooklyn. nypost.com

TSA Stopped 5,000+ Firearms At Airports In 2021

US: 50.8M Cases - 817.9K Dead - 40M Recovered
Worldwide: 270.5M Cases - 5.3M Dead - 243.3M Recovered

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

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 328  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 548
*Red indicates change in total deaths

Repeat of Last Year's Deadly Winter Surge?
Covid-19 Cases Rise in Many States After Thanksgiving

As Christmas nears, officials hope vaccines help stem repeat of last winter’s deadly surge

Covid-19 is surging in many parts of the country in the wake of Thanksgiving, with Christmastime gatherings on the horizon.

Health authorities in some hard-hit states, like Vermont, New Jersey and Maine, say people who became infected after traveling or gathering indoors for Thanksgiving are likely adding to the Covid-19 numbers. By Saturday, some 34 states had higher seven-day averages for new cases than they did before Thanksgiving, according to Johns Hopkins University data, with some of the biggest increases in the Northeast.

Epidemiologists believe colder weather, which draws people back inside where respiratory viruses can more easily spread, plays a big role. The U.S. seven-day average for new cases is about 119,000 a day, according to Johns Hopkins, up from a recent low near 71,000 in late October, when surges triggered by the Delta variant slowed in the South before starting to hit hard in northern states. wsj.com

More than 120,000 coronavirus cases are emerging each day
As conditions continue to worsen, especially in the Great Lakes region and in the Northeast.


New Mask Mandate Goes Into Effect in NY
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Imposes Mask Mandate for Indoor Places

The state mandate for places without a vaccine mandate goes into effect on Dec. 13 and will be re-evaluated in mid-January

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said New Yorkers must wear masks in public indoor places unless those places require people to be vaccinated against Covid-19. The requirement goes into effect Dec. 13 and lasts until Jan. 15, the state said Friday. The state said it would re-evaluate the policy after that time.

The new state requirement is being put in place as the new Omicron variant of the virus spreads in the U.S. The policy is an attempt to provide more protection during a time when people spend more time shopping indoors, gathering and attending holiday-themed destinations, state officials said.

“I have warned for weeks that additional steps could be necessary, and now we are at that point based upon three metrics: increasing cases, reduced hospital capacity, and insufficient vaccination rates in certain areas,” Ms. Hochul said in prepared remarks.

The state’s seven-day average of new cases was 9,693 as of Dec. 9, the highest it has been since March 30 of this year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. wsj.com

US employees outline return-to-work priorities
Forty-three percent of surveyed U.S. employees believe that returning to in-person work could pose a risk to their health and safety. With the rise of a new COVID-19 variant and the pervasiveness of the virus in the country, employees have turned to cleaning protocols as a potential safety measure at work.

A new survey from the Cleaning Coalition of America finds that U.S. workers increasingly value enhanced cleaning of the workplace and feel safer seeing professional cleaners onsite. A majority (89.9%) of respondents cited workplace cleaning protocols as important as employees return to the office, with 77% percent of workers wanting the workplace cleaned daily.

Fielded in late October, the survey examined the perceptions of 1,800 U.S. workers to understand expectations surrounding return-to-work as businesses look to reopen in the future.

Almost two years into the pandemic, nearly half of Americans surveyed still have lingering concerns about returning to the workplace. In fact, 38% of respondents would consider changing their jobs if the workplace was not cleaned properly. However, a clean workplace is not the only concern, with respondents citing COVID-19 infection rates as a primary impediment to returning to in-person work.

To examine further survey findings, click here. securitymagazine.com

The End of a Return-to-Office Date
More and more companies are saying: We’ll get back to you.
Return-to-office dates used to be like talismans; the chief executives who set them seemed to wield some power over the shape of the months to come. Then the dates were postponed, and postponed again. At some point the spell was broken. For many companies, office reopening plans have lost their fear factor, coming to seem like wishful thinking rather than a sign of futures filled with alarm clocks, commutes and pants that actually button. The R.T.O. date is gone. It’s been replaced with “we’ll get back to you.” nytimes.com
 

Amazon Warehouse Wiped Out By Tornado
At least six people died after an Amazon warehouse in Illinois took a direct hit
At least six people were killed at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois after a direct hit from a tornado caused a major portion of the building to collapse on Friday night, officials said.

Forty-five people were confirmed to have made it out the building, James Whiteford, the fire chief in Edwardsville, Ill., said at a news conference on Saturday. The authorities said they did not know how many people were inside the warehouse when the storm hit, so they did not know how many more people they were looking for.

Edwardsville sits about 25 miles east of St. Louis, and the Amazon building is in a distribution hub on the west side of town. When the tornado swept through around 8:35 p.m., it caused the walls of the building to fall inward and the roof to collapse, Chief Whiteford said, adding that the walls were about 40 feet tall and made of 11-inch-thick concrete.

“At this point we have transitioned to search and recovery,” the chief said. “We don’t expect that anyone could be surviving at this point.” He said that search efforts would continue for the next three days during daylight hours. nytimes.com

Satellite photos show Amazon warehouse before and after tornado

  

It's 'inexcusable' that Amazon asked staff to work during severe weather that collapsed a warehouse roof in Illinois, union says
Amazon should not have had staff working at an Illinois warehouse when a tornado caused its roof to collapse, the head of a major workers' union said.

The roof of the facility in Edwardsville fell in on Friday evening, leaving at least six workers dead. Local officials said the collapse was caused by extreme weather events.

"Time and time again Amazon puts its bottom line above the lives of its employees. Requiring workers to work through such a major tornado warning event as this was inexcusable," the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Stuart Appelbaum, said in a statement released Saturday.

"This is another outrageous example of the company putting profits over the health and safety of their workers, and we cannot stand for this. Amazon cannot continue to be let off the hook for putting hard working people's lives at risk. Our union will not back down until Amazon is held accountable for these and so many more dangerous labor practices," he added.

An Amazon spokesperson told Insider: "The site received tornado warnings between 8:06 and 8:16, and site leaders directed people on site to immediately take shelter. At 8:27, the tornado struck the building. Our team worked quickly to ensure employees and partners could get to the designated shelter in place area, and we want to thank them for everything they were able to do."

The RWDSU was involved in an effort earlier this year to unionize a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.

Amazon was not the only employer to have staff working during the severe weather events that ripped through Arkansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri this weekend. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he fears over 50 workers at a candle factory may be dead after it was hit by a tornado on Friday. businessinsider.com

Amazon Worker Ordered to Stay in Warehouse Before Tornado Hit
Amazon worker who died in warehouse collapse wasn’t allowed to leave
One of the victims who was killed when a tornado collapsed an Amazon Warehouse in Illinois texted his girlfriend before the deadly tornado struck saying that the company had ordered him to hold off driving home and stay put until the storm passed.

Larry Virden, 46, was killed on Friday night when the roof came down at a massive Amazon facility.

“I got text messages from him. He always tells me when he is filling up the Amazon truck when he is getting ready to go back…I was like ‘ OK, I love you.’ He’s like, ‘well Amazon won’t let me leave until after the storm blows over,’” his girlfriend of 13 years, Cherie Jones, told The Post on Sunday.

She said the text was sent around 8:23 p.m., 16 minutes before the tornado reportedly touched down at 8:39. The couple lived in nearby Collinsville, which Jones said is about 13 minutes away from the warehouse.

Asked if she faults Amazon for his death, Jones said with a sigh: “Not really. But it’s that what-if situation: what if they would have let him leave? He could have made it home.” nypost.com

Dollar General Store Destroyed by Tornado, Killing 1
Tornadoes Leave Trail of Devastation Across Six States, With Scores Dead
At least 100 people were feared dead in Kentucky after a swarm of tornadoes tore a 200-mile path through the U.S. Midwest and South, demolishing homes, levelling businesses and setting off a scramble to find survivors beneath the rubble, officials said Saturday.

The powerful twisters, which weather forecasters say are unusual in cooler months, destroyed a candle factory and the fire and police stations in a small town in Kentucky, ripped through a nursing home in neighboring Missouri, and killed at least six workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.

In Leachville, Arkansas, a tornado destroyed a Dollar General Store, killing one person, and laid waste to much of the city's downtown, said Lt. Chuck Brown of the Mississippi County Sheriff's Office in Arkansas.

Dozens of people were feared dead, and communities across the Midwest and South were digging through rubble on Saturday after a string of unseasonably powerful storms and tornadoes swept across six states overnight. reuters.com  nytimes.com

Jeff Bezos finally responds to Edwardsville Amazon warehouse deaths during tornado
Jeff Bezos on Saturday night said he was “heartbroken” over the deaths of at least six Amazon employees in an Illinois warehouse hit by a tornado Friday.

The Amazon founder was blasted on social media earlier Saturday for failing to mention the deadly incident in Edwardsville while cheering on his latest group of space tourists in an Instagram post.

In addition to the six fatalities, another worker was injured and 45 others had to be rescued from the football-field sized warehouse, located about 15 miles East of St. Louis, Missouri. nypost.com

Kentucky governor confirms 64 dead from weekend tornadoes in his state

Amazon driver died in bathroom sheltering from tornado with colleagues

Tornado Left Deadly Path of Destruction up to 250 Miles Long in Six States

FEMA administrator on extreme weather: 'This is going to be our new normal'

Unions Claim Retailers' Surveillance Tech is Being Used to Bust Unions
What Surveillance Techniques Are Not Allowed

'They Were Spying On Us': Amazon, Walmart, Use Surveillance Technology to Bust Unions

Technology-enabled surveillance—from keycard tagging and email monitoring to social media tracking and worker profiling—often introduced in the name of safety and productivity can have a chilling effect on organizing and allow companies to sidestep labor law. It enables employers to profile workers and gain insights into employees' private lives and their sentiments—who's likely going to be the most outspoken.

Amazon and Walmart are two of the best-known examples of employers using surveillance technology during union battles, sometimes skirting the law. Leaked internal documents from Walmart included methods for monitoring employee activity and conversations about union activism, Amazon's Whole Foods utilized heat maps that were based on predictive analytics to track store locations considered at high risk of union activity, and Google reportedly has a system to alert managers to any internal meetings scheduled with 100 or more employees, "partially to weed out employee organizing," according to the human resources newsletter HR Brew.

Since at least September, HelloFresh, which has been locked in a bitter struggle with UNITE HERE, which seeks to organize its workers, has been tracking social media posts about union activity using a marketing tool called Falcon. It's reportedly discussed monitoring the employees behind such posts and even reported such posts as spam to diminish their visibility. The company explained to Vice that "it is our duty to correct misinformation and mischaracterizations of our company."

Restrictions - What Surveillance Practices Aren't Allowed By NLRB Law - Continue Reading on Page 2

Body-worn video camera use extends beyond policing
As wearable video surveillance continues to be deployed, enterprise security teams in healthcare, retail and more are finding value in improved accountability, transparency and oversight.

Retail

Retail is an industry that is quickly seeing benefits from the use of wearable cameras. Retailers — be it department stores, grocery chains or restaurants — are focused on improving the customer experience, and wearable cameras recording employee-customer interactions deliver an exceptional tool for ensuring that retailers learn how to improve customer interactions while still providing a record of situations associated with false liability claims.

With the increase in online retail and, specifically, retail delivery — for companies such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS — package tracking and successful delivery are often disputed and result in significant losses to the retailer and delivery companies. To address this issue, carriers like Amazon have instilled the use of drivers taking photos of a package on a doorstep to show proof of delivery. An even better confirmation — and less time-consuming — is to equip drivers with wearable video devices that record every delivery without having to take individual photos at each stop.

Transportation

In the transportation industry, the top priorities with providers and operators are passenger and staff safety, as well as smooth, on-time operations. Wearable camera use in transportation has gained popularity, as video footage can provide both safety and validation of precautions taken on behalf of the operator. There are strict federal, state and local guidelines that govern transportation — be it an airline, railway, marine system or bussing. It’s essential that passenger safety, inspections and maintenance on these methods of transportation be routinely conducted and executed properly. With improved view and documentation of steps taken on behalf of these transportation groups, they know the deployment of such systems can be a matter of life and death and ultimately impact liability.

What about Privacy - Cost of Wearable Tech securitymagazine.com

Retailers Rank High in Customer Trust & Loyalty
Grocers Top Business Rankings for Customer Trust and Loyalty
Qualtrics, a firm specializing in experience management, has shared its 2022 Experience Index that ranks companies by customer trust and loyalty. This year, major grocery brands held five of the top 10 spots, underscoring the fact that consumers' lifestyles are still largely based at home.

Costco topped the annual list, followed by Amazon at No. 2, Kroger at No. 3, Publix at No. 4 and Aldi at No. 5. Rounding out the top 10 companies were Bose, Android, Visa, Etsy and Trader Joe's, respectively.

In its review of the top-ranked companies, Qualtrics highlighted grocers' efforts to provide a better customer experience in an uncertain time, such as Costco's successful positioning of its Kirkland brand and Kroger's investment in robotics technologies for quick and accurate orders.

The report also touted Publix's culture of employee owners who deliver personalized human experiences and Aldi's technologies that allow for speedier checkouts.

Other retailers included in Qualtrics' list of the 50 leading companies include Dollar General (No. 16) and Target (No. 25). progressivegrocer.com

Q3 2021 Cargo Theft Data
2021 Third Quarter Supply Chain Risk Trends Analysis
CargoNet® reports a total of 359 supply chain theft and fraud incidents across the United States and Canada in the third quarter of 2021. There were 294 total theft incidents that involved theft of a trucking vehicle like a semi-truck or theft of cargo. This is a 19 percent decrease from third quarter of 2020, but 2020 was a record-setting year for theft and when compared to the third quarter of 2019, theft reports are up 13 percent.

Theft reports along the West Coast of the United States increased 42 percent year-over-year. This comes as no surprise, as California continues to struggle with frequent thefts of high-end computer electronics shipments. Other regions of the country reported a reduction in theft when compared to third quarter of 2020, but each region had increased at least 16 percent in the third quarter of 2020 when compared to third quarter 2019. cargonet.com

Checkout-free stores set for rapid international expansion

Raising Consumer Awareness - Key to Reducing Retail’s Massive Rate of Returns


Quarterly Results

Chewy Q3 sales up 24.1%

Costco Q1 comp's up 9.9% in U.S. & up 8.3% in Canada, net sales up 16.7%