State Laws Alone Can't Solve ORC
State Crackdowns on Retail Crime Highlight Need for Federal Action

By the D&D Daily staff

Across the country, states have increasingly stepped in to address the rise of organized retail crime, passing legislation designed to strengthen penalties, expand investigative tools and create specialized task forces. These state-level efforts have helped improve enforcement in many regions, but industry leaders say they also highlight a broader challenge: retail crime is a national issue that cannot be fully addressed through a patchwork of state laws alone.

Over the past several years, multiple states have introduced legislation targeting organized retail theft networks. These laws often allow prosecutors to aggregate theft totals across multiple incidents, elevate penalties for organized theft operations and provide additional resources for law enforcement agencies investigating large-scale retail crime. In some cases, states have also launched dedicated retail crime task forces that bring together police departments, prosecutors and retail loss prevention professionals to share intelligence and coordinate investigations.

Retailers have welcomed these developments, noting that stronger legal frameworks and dedicated enforcement teams can make it easier to identify repeat offenders and dismantle local theft rings. Partnerships between retailers and law enforcement have also expanded, with companies sharing incident data and working with investigators to track patterns of organized theft.

However, many organized retail crime groups operate well beyond a single state’s borders. Theft crews often travel across multiple states targeting retail locations, while stolen merchandise may be quickly moved through interstate resale channels including online marketplaces, secondary distributors or informal networks.

This mobility makes it difficult for individual states to address the full scope of organized retail crime. Laws, enforcement priorities and investigative authorities can vary widely from one jurisdiction to another, creating gaps that organized groups may exploit. While a state crackdown may disrupt activity locally, theft operations can shift their focus to neighboring states with fewer resources or different enforcement structures.

As a result, many in the retail industry continue to emphasize the importance of a stronger federal role in addressing organized retail crime. National policy could help improve coordination across state lines, expand data sharing among law enforcement agencies and target the larger criminal networks responsible for trafficking stolen merchandise.

State legislation and operational collaboration remain important pieces of the response to retail crime. But as organized theft networks continue to operate across jurisdictions, many experts say a coordinated federal framework will be necessary to close the gaps left by a state-by-state approach.


More Robberies Being Solved
Robbery Clearance Rates Are Soaring

Though they're still under 40 percent.

The FBI will report its official 2025 crime statistics sometime this summer or early fall, but their recent switch to monthly preliminary reporting makes it far easier to understand crime and policing trends faster than ever before. The FBI published their data for all of 2025 from thousands of agencies that send monthly data a few weeks ago. There is one trend in the data that I haven't really talked about yet that really stands out:

The clearance rate data for 2025 is still very preliminary, but the monthly data is a pretty good predictor of where things will turn out in the formal Crime in the US release. Right now, nearly 36 percent of robberies that have been reported to the FBI for 2025 have been cleared which, if it holds up, would be the highest national clearance rate for robberies since 1965.

For context, my Saints went 6-11 in 2025 which works out to a nearly identical 35.3 percent winning percentage. So, robberies may have been cleared at the highest rate in 60 years last year, but it still wasn’t great!

Robberies do, however, stand out among other crimes with respect to their clearance rates relative to pre-COVID levels. Clearance rates for most crime types fell enormously in 2020 and 2021 but have returned to their historical norms. Robberies, by contrast, are far exceeding previous levels. Indeed, the robbery clearance rate in 2025 was likely the highest since the 1960s when clearance rate stats were notoriously unreliable.

There are 768 agencies that fit the Real-Time Crime Index inclusion criteria (cities of 50,000 or more, counties of 100,000 or more) that have complete data for both 2023 and 2025 in the Crime Data Explorer. The data for 2025 is still preliminary, so this might be an overstatement, but 619 (80 percent) of those 768 agencies had fewer robberies in 2025 than 2023 while 70 percent of them had a higher robbery clearance rate in 2025 than in 2023.

These figures are subject to change, but only 3 of the 95 agencies that reported 250 or more robberies in 2023 reported more robberies in 2025. jasher.substack.com


Prop 36 & Task Forces Making an Impact
Fresno task force cracking down on retail theft
The unit was created after the passage of Proposition 36, which provided funding for additional detectives to investigate retail theft and target repeat offenders.

According to Fresno Police, the team consists of a sergeant, five detectives, and plainclothes officers who work proactively to identify suspects, sometimes even before they leave a store.

Retail theft has been an ongoing challenge for local businesses, including Roman Gonzales, owner of Drip On Drip in Fresno’s River Park shopping area. Gonzales says his store has been targeted multiple times by shoplifters.

Fresno Police say their new task force is designed to take a more aggressive and proactive approach to organized retail crime.

“With the passage of Prop 36, when it was enacted, we ended up getting grant funding to provide more detectives to basically investigate organized retail theft,” said Sgt. Larry Bowlan with the Fresno Police Department.

Bowlan says the department is also working closely with surrounding agencies to track repeat offenders and share information across jurisdictions.

“With that local collaboration, we share a lot of the prolific and repeat offenders’ information so that they can be aware of these folks in their jurisdictions,” Bowlan said.

Police say that collaboration helps investigators identify suspects and prevent additional thefts, whether they occur in Fresno or neighboring cities. yourcentralvalley.com


Is Data the Key to Fighting Crime?
Data-driven strategies help Madison crime drop in 2025
Madison saw a decline in violent and property crimes in 2025 as the Madison Police Department continues its focus on community outreach and data-driven patrol strategies.

"By using incident-related data, we can identify crime trends and direct resources more effectively," said Madison Police Chief John Patterson.

The city has fostered partnerships with public health departments, community organizations and the Madison Metropolitan School District.

In 2025, officers responded to 117 reports of gunshots, a 10.7% decrease from 2024. Homicides dropped from seven in 2024 to five in 2025. Burglaries and robberies also saw significant declines, with burglaries down more than 16% and robberies down 2% from the previous year. wkow.com


Memphis: Data shows decrease in all major crime categories

Santa Barbara Sheriff: Automated license plate data not shared with federal agencies