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2012 Archives
Excerpts from
GAO-11-675: Efforts to Combat Organized Retail
Crime
The U.S. Government Accountability Office ORC report
June 2011
LERPnet Provides a Mechanism to Share Data
Nationally, but Stakeholders Report That Use of the
Database by Retailers and Law Enforcement Has Been
Limited
As part of the Violence
Against Women and Department of Justice
Reauthorization Act of 2005, the Attorney General
and the FBI were required to establish a task force
to provide expertise to the retail community for the
establishment of a national database, to be housed
and maintained in the private sector and to track
and identify where organized retail theft crimes
occur. According to the legislation, the national
database was to allow federal, state, and local law
enforcement officials, as well as authorized retail
companies, to transmit information into the database
and review information that was submitted
electronically. According to the statement of the
amendment’s sponsor, the database was, among other
things, intended to help provide federal law
enforcement with information illustrating the
interstate nature of organized retail theft crimes.
While funds were authorized in the act for
activities related to federal efforts to combat
organized retail theft and for working with the
private sector to establish and use the database, no
money was ever appropriated under this section.
Despite the lack of federal funding, a working group
was established—comprised of the FBI and three major
retail associations—to move forward with the
development of the database. One retail association,
NRF, ultimately took ownership of the project and
provided the sole funding for the creation of what
became known as the Law Enforcement Retail
Partnership Network (LERPnet). LERPnet became
operational for retailers in 2007 and was linked to
Law Enforcement Online (LEO.gov) in January 2010,
which provided access to all federal, state, and
local law enforcement officers.
Despite initial support, none of the five retailers
we interviewed found LERPnet to be a useful system
for sharing information and identifying trends
related to ORC. Two retailers told us they
discontinued their membership in LERPnet because it
did not provide a sufficient return on investment. A
major retailer, which continues to support LERPnet,
further indicated that its internal data along with
regional information-sharing networks have generally
been more useful than LERPnet in investigating ORC.
While all five indicated that they believed in the
goal of LERPnet as a way to share information, some
felt it lacked sophisticated analytics to help
retailers identify trends and standardized data
entry (each retailer chooses what information to
enter). Retail stakeholders indicated analytical
tools to help identify national-level ORC trends and
patterns would be useful, helping to connect suspect
information. Local law enforcement officials we
interviewed also indicated that LERPnet was not
widely used to facilitate their investigative
efforts. Specifically, officials from eight of the
local law enforcement agencies stated that they rely
primarily on regional information-sharing networks
as their cases are typically regional in nature.
According to these officials, the regional networks
are most relevant to local law enforcement because
they are specifically targeted to the investigative
area and bordering jurisdictions and provide
real-time updates.
(Source
gao.gov)
Continued on Monday.
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