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2024 Robberies & Burglaries by Store Type
C-Store Most-Targeted Again

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Cracking Down or Backing Off?
Cities Diverge on the Fight Against ORC

By the D&D Daily staff

As organized retail crime (ORC) continues to batter businesses across the country, cities are taking increasingly divergent approaches—some doubling down on coordinated enforcement, others struggling to align priorities across agencies.

In jurisdictions like Los Angeles, law enforcement has launched aggressive, specialized task forces to target ORC rings. The LAPD's Organized Retail Crime Task Force, revived last year, has made dozens of high-profile arrests and seized thousands of dollars in stolen goods. In Chicago, a state-funded initiative is providing grants to major retailers to enhance security technology while partnering with local and state police to share intelligence and track fencing operations.

But not all cities are on the same page. In San Francisco, where retail theft has made national headlines, critics argue that the lack of alignment between prosecutors and police has hampered progress. While the San Francisco Police Department has increased patrols and launched blitz operations at retail hotspots, some retailers have expressed frustration with what they view as lenient prosecution or delayed charging decisions.

The difference often comes down to leadership and coordination. In New York City, a recent joint initiative between the NYPD, state investigators, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office led to the takedown of a multi-million-dollar ORC ring responsible for reselling stolen cosmetics and over-the-counter medications. Success, officials say, came from months of joint surveillance, information sharing, and follow-through in court.

“Organized retail crime doesn’t stop at a city line or county border,” said one loss prevention executive. “The response can’t either.”

Retailers are increasingly pushing for standardized responses at the state and federal levels. The INFORM Consumers Act, which went into effect last year, has helped expose shady online resellers, but enforcement still varies by jurisdiction. Many in the industry are now advocating for more states to adopt dedicated ORC statutes and centralized task forces that mirror those in states like Florida and Arizona.

With the retail sector continuing to face shrink-related losses and safety concerns, the path forward may depend not just on stronger laws—but on how effectively local governments, law enforcement, and retail leaders work together.


Will 2024's Nationwide Crime Drop Continue in 2025?
'U.S. could see lowest violent crime rate since the moon landing if the trend continues through 2025.'

US violent crime could hit lowest rate ‘since the moon landing’ in 2025
America saw some of its lowest overall crime rates in more than half a century in 2024, according to the FBI’s annual crime report published Tuesday. The numbers are so significant that one crime data analyst suggested that the U.S. could see its lowest violent crime rate since the moon landing in 1969 if the trend continues through 2025.

Of course, there have been crime spikes, particularly in the 1990s and during the waning years of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, crime has largely been trending downward since 2022, despite how most Americans feel about crime in the nation.

The FBI’s analysis relies on voluntary reporting from law enforcement agencies across the country. Participation was up 2.1% compared to 2023, totaling roughly 96% of agencies nationwide and a population of more than 325 million people.

The report also notes that, as of 2024, every city agency serving a population of more than 1 million residents contributed a full year’s worth of data to the FBI’s reporting. That includes Los Angeles, which had stopped reporting its crime metrics at the federal level following a change to how those numbers were collected in 2021.

The FBI’s Unified Crime Report for 2024 suggests that violent crime was down 4.5%, as property crime and hate crime fell by 8.1% and 1.5%, respectively. That’s according to self-reported data from 19,328 law enforcement agencies nationwide. san.com


'Boots-on-the-Ground Approach' to Fighting Retail Theft
Prop 36 leads to nearly 300 felony charges in Fresno County, police chief shares stern warning
Fresno's police chief is now revealing the enforcement behind Proposition 36 as Fresno retailers say it has slashed retail theft. "We take crime seriously, we put resources towards it and we will arrest you," Chief Mindy Casto said.

She confirmed her department is using a boots-on-the-ground approach. "We actually have a tactical team that operates every day, during the day, for retail theft in progress," Casto said. "The results are starting to speak for themselves, with the huge reductions we've seen in theft."

Fresno's River Park, once a prime target for brazen thieves and high-profile smash-and-grab thefts, now reports a more than 50 percent drop in retail theft. "Victims now can say that the person who robbed them, stole from them, vandalized their property, actually have consequences," District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp told Action News.

Smittcamp supported Proposition 36, which stiffens penalties for retail theft, bringing it from a misdemeanor to a felony for thieves with at least two prior convictions.

"What we're doing now is we're training our people in-house to look back at priors, to look back to see how many misdemeanor convictions people have for both theft and drugs," Smittcamp said.

In seven months on the books, Fresno County prosecutors have reviewed 335 cases of potential felony theft. Data reviewed by Action News reveals 287 have resulted in formal charges. abc30.com


Virginia's ORC Unit Gets a Leader
Greene Heads To AG's Office Police Chief To Lead Retail Crime Unit
After more than four years of leading the Lexington Police Department, Chief Angela Greene is departing at the end of the week for a new chapter: heading the Organized Retail Crime Unit at the Virginia attorney general’s office.

Organized retail crime is “a significant and growing concern in Virginia,” according to information on the attorney general’s office’s website. It involves efforts by groups of criminals to “illegally obtain retail merchandise, cash, confidential data and/or consumer information” with the intent usually being to use any money generated from these efforts to help fund other criminal enterprises, such as drug and human trafficking.

As the director of the Organized Retail Crime Unit, Greene will be heading an effort by the attorney general’s office to “coordinate a statewide strategy to combat organized retail theft rings.”

“This will include me working with local law enforcement, prosecutors, retail partners and other community stakeholders to disrupt this criminal network,” Greene said. thenews-gazette.com


Robbery, overdose deaths down in Akron; sex assaults, burglaries trending up

‘Erode public safety’: Expert outlines what Mamdani’s policies will mean for NYC
 

Siffron's Sliding Clear Security Gate

Product security & visibility in one solution

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Mounting hardware is provided to secure the gates to standard Lozier or Madix shelving. Side panels are available to close off the ends and prevent side access, creating a secure system. This solution is available in wire grid or in clear glass gates.

Evaluating Cybersecurity Risks in Retail:
A New Era of Third-Party Vulnerabilities

- Pandora's 2025 breach exposed third-party vulnerabilities as a key data theft vector, mirroring incidents at M&S and Adidas.

- Retailers are boosting cybersecurity budgets, with global spending projected to hit $200B by 2028, focusing on identity management and vendor oversight.

- Cybersecurity firms SailPoint (SAIL) and SentinelOne (S) emerge as undervalued opportunities, offering identity governance and AI-driven threat detection solutions.

- Investors are advised to diversify across cybersecurity sectors to mitigate risks from regulatory shifts and technological obsolescence.

The retail industry, long a target for cybercriminals, now faces a paradigm shift in risk exposure. Recent breaches at global brands like Pandora, Marks & Spencer, and Adidas underscore a troubling trend: third-party vulnerabilities are becoming the primary vector for data theft. These incidents, often involving compromised vendor platforms or cloud services, highlight a critical gap in enterprise cybersecurity strategies. For investors, this evolving threat landscape presents both challenges and opportunities.

In August 2025, Pandora, the Danish jewelry giant, disclosed a data breach affecting customer names, email addresses, and birthdates. While the company emphasized that no financial data was compromised, the breach originated from a third-party platform linked to its Salesforce database—a common target for social engineering and phishing campaigns. This incident aligns with a broader pattern of attacks exploiting supply chain weaknesses, as seen in breaches at LVMH subsidiaries, Qantas, and Co-op.

The financial and reputational toll of such breaches is significant. For instance, M&S reported a £300 million annual profit hit from a separate 2025 breach. Though Pandora has not quantified its losses, the incident has spurred increased cybersecurity investments, including AI-driven threat detection and enhanced vendor oversight. Retailers are now grappling with the reality that third-party risks are no longer peripheral but central to their operational resilience. ainvest.com


Cyber Attacks Targeting Overlooked Network Corners
Ransomware is up, zero-days are booming, and your IP camera might be next
Cyber attackers are finding new ways in through the overlooked and unconventional network corners. Forescout’s 2025H1 Threat Review reveals a surge in advanced tactics, with zero-day exploits up 46 percent and ransomware attacks averaging 20 per day.

Based on an analysis of over 23,000 vulnerabilities and 885 threat actors across 159 countries, the report shows adversaries are increasingly targeting non-traditional equipment like edge devices, IP cameras, and BSD servers. These footholds often enable lateral movement across IT, OT, and IoT environments, allowing attackers to reach deeper into networks and compromise critical systems.

“We’re seeing attackers gain initial access through overlooked IoT devices or infostealers, then use lateral movement to pivot across IT, OT, and IoT environments,” said Sai Molige, Senior Manager of Threat Hunting at Forescout. “Our ValleyRAT hunt, which uncovered the Chinese threat actor Silver Fox targeting healthcare systems, is a prime example. These attackers exploit blind spots to quietly escalate access.” helpnetsecurity.com


Public-Private Collaboration Key to Cybersecurity
CISA’s relationship with industry needs work to reestablish trust, experts say

Critics say budget cuts, job losses have hurt the agency’s ability to coordinate with private industry.

Collaboration between agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and private industry remains essential to build resilience and combat sophisticated cyber adversaries, a panel of government and private-sector experts said on Tuesday.

U.S. authorities have a lot of work to do to restore trust with their industry partners following months of upheaval under President Donald Trump that occurred as the U.S. remains under heightened cyber threat, the experts said during a conversation at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas.

The panelists largely agreed that the federal government should continue to lean on private industry to share critical threat information, even as critics warn that Trump’s massive job cuts will significantly impede the government’s ability to respond to threats identified through that sharing. cybersecuritydive.com


Cybersecurity and the development of software-defined vehicles

Top US energy companies frequently exposed to critical security flaws