ORC Legislation Roundup
How Federal & State Governments Are Working to Fight Theft

By the D&D Daily staff

Check out our new roundup of some recent developments in the ORC legislation space and continue to follow the D&D Daily for more news as lawmakers make retail crime a priority.

Federal Legislation

Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025: Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) have reintroduced this bipartisan bill aiming to establish an Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center within the Department of Homeland Security. The center would facilitate collaboration among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to address organized retail theft.

State-Level Initiatives

New York: Governor Kathy Hochul, along with New York City business leaders and district attorneys, is advocating for stronger discovery laws to combat organized retail theft. The proposed changes aim to streamline the legal process and reduce case dismissals related to retail crimes.

California: Governor Gavin Newsom signed a legislative package comprising 10 bills designed to tackle organized retail theft. The laws increase penalties for repeat offenders and enhance tools for felony prosecutions.

Ohio: The state enacted the Fight Organized Retail Crime & Empower Law Enforcement (FORCE) Act, establishing a statewide task force and advisory council to address organized retail theft. The law introduces stiffer penalties and aims to improve coordination among law enforcement agencies.

South Carolina: A new law defines "organized retail crime" as thefts involving two or more individuals conspiring to steal and resell merchandise. The legislation imposes harsher penalties and was unanimously approved by the state legislature.

Maryland: The state passed a bill allowing prosecutors to aggregate thefts committed by the same individual across multiple days and jurisdictions within a 90-day period. This approach aims to address the complexities of prosecuting organized retail theft.

New Jersey: Governor Phil Murphy signed legislation upgrading certain retail theft offenses and imposing extended prison terms for repeat offenders. The law also addresses gift card fraud and mandates consumer notices to combat organized retail theft.


New ORC Alliance in Tennessee
Memphis, TN: New collaboration of crime fighters working with new law to put smackdown on shoplifters
We’ve seen it time and time again: Organized theft rings targeting businesses across Memphis then re-selling their loot online. Now, a new collaboration of crime fighters is working with a new law to put the smackdown on shoplifters.

Edwards works with Jonathan McGraw and the newly-formed Tennessee Organized Retail Crime Alliance. It’s made up of more than 400 law enforcement officers and retailers working directly with legislators to take back their neighborhoods.

Earlier this year, McGraw’s group worked with lawmakers to expand the Organized Retail Crime Prevention Act. Beginning July 1, offenses like removing anti-shoplifting devices, interfering with fire alarms, or using online marketplaces to sell stolen merchandise come with increased penalties. Read more about the bill here.

“Those individuals can be charged with organized retail crime, and the punishment could be higher,” said McGraw.

Memphis Police Lt. Eric Petrowski handles shoplifting and theft cases for the Appling Farms Precinct.

In order to improve response time to retail thefts in that area, around 60 store owners collaborate with a dedicated team of retail investigators and patrol officers to communicate and share video in real time.

“It started out mainly with the anchor stores then it kind of bled into some of the smaller stores, chain stores,” said Lt. Petrowski. The crackdown appears to be working. Since 2023, more than 150 people have been arrested for retail theft in the Appling Farms area - including this group of beer thieves. actionnews5.com


Retailers Worldwide Using AI to Fight Theft
Sainsbury's Introduces AI-Powered Self-Checkout Surveillance
In an urgent attempt to crackdown on thefts, the supermarket giant has installed new cameras that record packing actions at the till. If an item isn't scanned, Sainsbury’s customers are shown the video feed and told: “Looks like that last item didn’t scan. “Please check you scanned it correctly before continuing.”

A retail source said: “It’s a deterrent to shoplifters. “Most people have made a genuine mistake while scanning, which is detected by the scales. “It’s a more gentle reminder than red flashing lights and a member of staff coming over.”

A Sainsbury’s spokeswoman said: "We regularly review the security measures in our stores and our decisions to implement them are based on a range of factors, including offering our customers a smooth checkout experience."

Despite shoplifting being at a record high, just one in five incidents reported resulted in a charge — and more than half ended with no suspect identified. Tom Ironside, of the British Retail Consortium, said the crime is costing firms £2billion a year.

This comes as shoplifting offences have gone past half a million in a year for the first time. A record 516,971 incidents were logged by police — up from 429,873 in 2023. Yet only a fifth resulted in a charge while more than half of investigations ended with no suspect identified. thescottishsun.co.uk


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San Francisco Has Become a 'Consumerist Graveyard'
Downtown San Francisco retail is dying. What's replacing it is so much worse.
As I stroll past the bones of retail giants, “For Lease” signs mark abandoned storefronts like lurid headstones. I see the empty Uniqlo, H&M and Forever21, along with a vacant Walgreens and the former Diesel outpost, which looms over Market Street like a pillaged kingdom. Overall, the neighborhood feels less like an economic epicenter and more like a consumerist graveyard.

But among these depressing corporate relics is an unusual and perhaps welcome sight: groups of stylish young people with mullets, micro-tattoos and designer clothes hobnobbing inside a new, sleek retail space on Geary Street. From a distance, it’s unclear what, exactly, it’s supposed to be, or what types of products it intends to sell.

Inside, EDM blasts from a coffee cart while baristas pour oat milk lattes and flat whites. In front of them is a wooden, cage-like structure lined with mysterious-looking white spheres. But this isn’t a modern art gallery opening or a new Mac store: hordes of tech enthusiasts and local news crews are here to celebrate the unveiling of Sam Altman’s new — and dystopian — “proof of human” technology, also known as the Orb.

It almost seems like a cruel joke that this flagship location, which literally compares itself to an Apple store, sits directly next to the decades-old Macy’s that humbly advertises old vanguards like Wetzel’s Pretzels, the Cheesecake Factory and Jamba Juice. Weary, disinterested shoppers in sweatpants slowly emerge from the department retailer, shuffling past tech enthusiasts in Celine jackets and avant-garde designer outfits.

When I left, I couldn’t help but wonder: As major retailers leave gaping holes in San Francisco’s commercial epicenter, is this what’s going to fill the void? And, ultimately, do we really need or want this? Based on the general public’s response — and the types of powerful people behind these business ventures — I wasn’t optimistic. sfgate.com


Businesses Getting Queasy Over Tariffs
Tariffs and Business Uncertainty: The Current State of Play

Mid-sized American companies increasingly believe that tariffs will have a negative impact on them and worry about their ability to adapt to supply chain disruptions.

The Trump administration’s highly fluid global tariffs campaign is increasingly testing the limits of mid-sized firms to plan and make operational decisions. Uncertainty clouds short-term outlooks for trade, consumer spending and the economy, and companies must decide how to respond.

PYMNTS Intelligence surveyed the heads of payments at U.S. middle-market firms generating annual revenues between $100 million and $1 billion in late March. At the time, the April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement was approaching, but no one knew exactly what that meant. Companies still largely don’t, amid a bourgeoning U.S.-China trade war, constant adjustments for some levies on major trading partners and mixed signals about “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly all countries. “Pervasive” uncertainty, as the Federal Reserve called it, leaves the picture as muddy now as when we collected the data.

Meanwhile, warning signs are building. The U.S. economy shrank 0.3% from January through March, the first quarterly contraction since 2022, and things could quickly worsen. The levies would broadly increase prices on everything from toys and electronics to luxury watches and cars, and crimp consumer spending. This hit would have knock-on effects for businesses, jobs and investments. PYMNTS Intelligence recently estimated that even a mild decline in consumer spending could vaporize $92 billion per year from the economy.

More than half of the heads of payments we surveyed in goods verticals believe tariffs will be bad for their companies, a sharp increase from the previous month. These firms are bracing for supply chain disruptions, with about 9 in 10 expecting product delivery delays or shortages and higher raw material costs. Respondents at services firms, which rely less on imports, are generally more ambivalent, but still flag many concerns of their own.  pymnts.com


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Dismantled
NIOSH Upheld Workplace Safety for Millions in the US. Trump Is Dismembering It.

The Trump administration is dismantling the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

For more than half a century, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a division of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), has worked to improve workplace safety and to study the effects on workers of exposures to toxins such as lead.

Its teams of epidemiologists, occupational nurses, specialist doctors, toxins experts, and others do everything from going into pharmaceuticals production sites to monitor for dangerous levels of pharmaceutical dust, to making sure the ventilation at cannabis processing facilities is safe, to investigating fatalities and injuries at construction sites.

NIOSH is a congressionally created, and funded, agency, having been established as part of the larger Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. It has roughly 1,300 staff spread around the country, in offices in Washington, D.C.; Ohio; West Virginia; Alaska; Pennsylvania; Washington; Georgia and Colorado. Taken as a whole, despite the fact that the agency’s budget is only $363 million — which translates to a little over two dollars per year per U.S. worker — the agency’s employees do some of the most important public health and labor safety work in the country, carrying out, at the request both of employers and of employees and trade unions, evaluations, and then remediation, of potentially dangerous workplaces.

HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved NIOSH from under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and placed it under the auspices of the newly created Administration for a Healthy America, where it was summarily dismembered. truthout.org

 
In-Store AI
Lowe’s rolls out AI assistant for store associates
Lowe’s store associates have a new artificial intelligence tool designed to enhance customer service as well as employee onboarding.

Lowe’s Companies Inc. is introducing Mylow Companion, an AI-enabled employee app developed in partnership with Open AI, developer of the ChatGPT generative AI model. Purpose-built for associate sales floor devices, the app provides access to product details, project advice, and inventory information, and also speeds up the employee onboarding process.

According to Lowe’s the launch of MyLow Companion to all associates across its more than 1,700 stores marks the first time a retailer has successfully implemented this kind of technology at scale. Mylow Companion uses generative AI to let associates obtain answers to customer inquiries using natural, conversational prompts, including voice-to-text for faster, hands-free use.

Mylow Companion is built on the same platform as Lowe’s recently launched Mylow customer chatbot. Mylow delivers quick, conversational answers directly to customers’ home improvement questions and can provide insights on customer projects during their product discovery, helping ensure they find and purchase the right tools and materials for their projects. chainstoreage.com 


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