Stopping the Cart, Not the Person
How Cart-Based Technology Is Helping Retailers Stop Pushout Theft While Reducing the Need for Confrontation

As retailers look to reduce confrontation, cart-based technology offers another way to address pushout theft while keeping merchandise inside the store

By the D&D Daily staff

As we wrote about earlier this week in the D&D Daily, one of the biggest challenges in retail loss prevention is stopping theft without creating a more dangerous situation in the process.

Pushout theft illustrates that challenge particularly well. An offender can load a shopping cart with unpaid merchandise and attempt to walk directly out of the store, leaving employees with a decision about whether — and how — to respond.

Increasingly, technology is giving retailers another option: stop the cart instead of confronting the person pushing it.

Cart-based pushout prevention systems are designed specifically for that purpose. Gatekeeper Systems' Purchek technology, for example, uses its SmartWheel technology to prevent unauthorized carts containing unpaid merchandise from being pushed out of the store.

Rather than identifying or physically stopping an individual, the technology focuses on the shopping cart. When the system determines that a cart has not met the criteria for an authorized exit, the cart can be disabled at the door, keeping the merchandise inside the store.

It's a relatively simple idea with potentially important implications for LP teams.

Preventing the cart from leaving can interrupt the theft while reducing the need for an associate to physically confront, chase or apprehend the individual. In many cases, the goal becomes merchandise protection without escalating the encounter.

The technology can also be paired with additional intelligence capabilities. Gatekeeper offers Theft Intelligence Services that use event-based video from pushout incidents to help retailers classify events, identify theft trends and investigate potential repeat or organized retail crime activity.

Technology alone won't eliminate retail theft, and pushout prevention addresses one particular method of stealing rather than the broader shoplifting problem. But it represents an important direction for modern loss prevention: finding ways to intervene in the theft itself without necessarily intervening with the person.

As retailers continue balancing shrink reduction with employee and customer safety, sometimes the most effective intervention may be the one that stops the merchandise at the door.

   Learn more about Gatekeeper's solution here.


Cracking Down on Self-Checkout Theft
New self checkout law will limit purchases to 15 items or less

Shoppers could be forced to limit how much they purchase at self-checkout under a US city’s proposed law.

Legislators in West Hollywood, California, believe the mandate would quell theft and and reduce pressure on supermarket staff.

Anyone who wants to purchase more than 15 items would have to use a staffed lane and scan each product, according to lawmakers. The rule is being weighed by lawmakers to address shoplifting concerns.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the West coast state recorded over 132,000 shoplifting cases in 2024, the highest ever. There is also growing concerns surrounding retail employee numbers, with many reporting feeling understaffed during shifts and unable to deal with self checkout demands.

Retail employees working in stores with self checkouts are 14 percent more likely to feel disrespected by customers, according to a report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.

Other Californian cities have already implemented changes to self checkout staffing regulations, with one employee required to man every two checkouts in Long Beach.

As well as a limit on items allowed at self checkouts, customers in West Hollywood could also face a ban on age restricted items, such as alcohol, being allowed at self checkouts.

It’s thought the changes would mainly apply to larger retail spaces, such as stores bigger than 15,000 square feet. Grocery stores and drugstores will mainly be the retailers impacted by the regulations, with around 12 stores in West Hollywood predicted to have to follow the rules. the-sun.com


Ohio's 'Retail Theft Prevention Act'
The more shoplifters, the tougher the penalty? Ohio bill targets group retail theft
A group rushing into a store and stealing merchandise together could face sharply tougher penalties than individual shoplifters under a proposal currently under consideration in the Statehouse.

House Bill 615 would create a new crime of “group retail theft,” with penalties ranging from a fifth-degree felony to a second-degree felony depending largely on how many people participate. The proposal is aimed at coordinated thefts in which a crowd enters a store at once, grabs merchandise and leaves, even when the amount taken by each individual would ordinarily result in a lesser charge.

Also known as the Retail Theft Prevention Act, the bill is sponsored by Republican Rep. Josh Williams of Sylvania and has received two hearings in the Small Business Committee. So far, the discussion surrounding the legislation has centered on whether tougher penalties are necessary to address a form of collective theft that prosecutors can already pursue under existing laws.

Under current Ohio law, theft is generally a first-degree misdemeanor when less than $1,000 is stolen and becomes a fifth-degree felony once the value reaches $1,000. Penalties continue to rise as the value increases. HB 615 would treat the group’s size as another measure of the offense’s seriousness, with penalties increasing as more people participate.

The monetary threshold would not necessarily have to be reached during a single trip to a single store. The bill would allow the value of merchandise stolen by the same person or people from one or more retailers over a 180-day period to be added together.

The proposal also follows House Bill 366 from the 135th General Assembly, which is a much broader retail crime law that took effect last year. The FORCE (Fight Organized Retail Crime and Empower Law Enforcement) Act established a statewide organized retail theft task force and advisory council within the attorney general’s office. It also created a separate crime targeting organized theft of at least $7,500 in retail property for resale or other enterprise-related purposes. cleveland.com


Train Robberies Enter the Modern Age
The great modern train robbery: Thieves steal $200 million a year

Carriers are deploying AI-powered surveillance and drones after criminal gangs stole more than $200 million in goods from US trains in 2025.

Train robberies are a trope of cowboy Westerns, associated with 19th-century outlaws like Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Reno Gang. But the modern incarnation is largely a product of the pandemic, with theft quadrupling from levels seen before 2020. Once lockdowns began, criminal gangs that had relied on the drug trade saw their supply chains disrupted just as stay-at-home requirements boosted demand for physical goods. So the gangs pivoted to theft, focused on the rail hubs located in urban bottlenecks including Chicago, Los Angeles and Memphis.

Criminals nabbed more than $200 million of goods from 75,000 thefts on US freight rail networks in 2025, according to an industry group that represents CSX, BNSF Railway Co. and Union Pacific Corp., among others.

In response, the major freight carriers are joining with local police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and corporate security teams, investing millions of dollars in monitoring technology, drones, barbed-wire fencing and other improvements. It’s all meant to defeat the crime rings that are often armed with nothing more than hydraulic bolt cutters, preying on railroads as a reliable source of easy-to-steal merchandise.

“These gangs can steal tens of thousands worth of goods in minutes, not to mention the damage that can be done to the trains,” Sean Douris, the chief of police at CSX, said in an interview.

For the most part, these aren’t armed holdups but instead more like storage-facility break-ins. Industry efforts over the past decades to improve efficiency and maximize profit mean that trains sometimes stretch as long as 3 miles, and often operate with just two crew members. Criminals have studied the lengthy and predictable stop times as the trains approach depots, a prime time to strike. fortune.com


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