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9/17/26

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Your LP Tech Roadmap. From Devices to Agentic AI.

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The U.S. Crime Surge
The Retail Impact

Retail Manager De-Escalation
Retail Managers Are Becoming the Front Line in De-Escalation
The first person responding to a tense situation inside a retail store isn't always a security professional. Often, it's a manager.

That reality is influencing how retailers approach workplace violence and store safety as confrontations involving customers, disruptive behavior and theft remain significant concerns.

NRF's 2026 theft and violence study found retailers continuing to report increases in guest-related violence and homelessness-related disruptions, while other violence-related incidents remained at high levels of risk.

The response increasingly involves training people whose primary jobs aren't security.

Seventy-two percent of retailers surveyed said they are investing in management training related to workplace violence prevention, while 65% are investing in employee training and 61% in risk-intelligence technologies. That makes sense operationally.

Managers are already responsible for handling customer complaints, employee conflicts and unusual situations. They are frequently the first leadership presence available when an interaction begins escalating.

But de-escalation requires a different mindset than traditional customer service.

The objective isn't necessarily resolving the original dispute. In some circumstances, the safest outcome is creating distance, disengaging and getting additional help. That makes policies important.

Employees need to understand when they should intervene, when they shouldn't, what behavior requires escalation and what resources are available. Managers also need organizational support for decisions that prioritize safety over recovering merchandise or completing a transaction.

The growing emphasis on de-escalation reflects a larger change in retail asset protection. Preventing loss remains important, but preventing an ordinary incident from becoming a violent one can be far more consequential.

Training also provides consistency. A manager shouldn't have to invent a response to an escalating situation while it is happening. The manager standing twenty feet away may never have considered themselves part of the store's security program.

In practice, they may be one of its most important components. nrf.com

U.S. retail sales surged past expectations in August as shoppers kept spending despite inflation

U.S. retail and food services sales rose 1.2% in August from the prior month, beating forecasts and reversing a July decline, the Census Bureau said Wednesday. The result was the largest monthly gain since March.

Total sales came in at $773.9 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis, up 6.0% from August 2025, according to the Census Bureau. The July figure was revised to a 0.5% decline from a previously reported 0.6% drop.

Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast a 0.8% rebound, according to Reuters. The stronger-than-expected result prompted economists to raise their gross domestic product growth estimates for the third quarter.

Consumers drove broader demand, with purchases rising across multiple goods categories and dining and drinking establishments alike seeing stronger traffic. Part of the overall increase reflected a jump in gasoline prices, which pushed service-station sales up 3.1%, according to Reuters.

"This reaffirms that the economy is more than capable of handling higher interest rates, providing the Fed plenty of scope to hike to get inflation under control," Bradley Saunders, North America economist at Capital Economics, told Reuters.

The retail figures were released on the same day as separate data showing import prices jumped last month. Together, the two readings reinforced the case for an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve. qz.com

How the retail crime bill could bolster ICE

A bill that is close to becoming law would deepen the involvement of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in combating retail crime. If it does, it would come at a time when federal crime-fighting agents are being diverted to support mass deportations, and as the public grows increasingly wary — even intolerant — of ICE’s tactics.

A Senate vote on the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, known as CORCA, is expected by the end of the year, after passage in the House of Representatives in May. The bill, a top goal of retail industry lobbyists for years, has bipartisan support in both houses of Congress. It would create a new bureaucracy at the Department of Homeland Security — the Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center — within the Homeland Security Investigations unit.

ICE’s director would appoint the head of the new center.

Many retailers and loss prevention experts support CORCA because it streamlines cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement and the private sector, with the goal of fighting crime. But some experts, including people in retail, loss prevention, immigration law and civil rights law, warn that it puts retailers in the middle of an immigration crackdown that has little to do with theft.

Industry groups are not focused on these concerns. In their answers to queries from Retail Dive, the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association, both top CORCA boosters, sidestepped questions about ICE’s role and the diversion of HSI resources to immigration enforcement. The ICSC, which represents shopping centers, didn’t respond.

David Johnston, the NRF’s vice president of asset protection and retail operations, has testified in favor of the legislation, including earlier versions from previous Congressional sessions that didn’t get a floor vote. In an emailed statement, Johnston said that “CORCA, as written, defines the narrow scope of criminal activity involving organized retail crime and provides congressional oversight of the proposed Center under HSI.” retaildive.com

Target to open 8 stores in October

On Oct. 11, Target is opening eight new locations in New York, Ohio, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia and Tennessee, according to a press release.

These stores, which include one in the Hamptons, are the last of the 30 locations the company planned to open this year. Seven of the eight new stores are larger than 125,000 square feet, the average size of its stores.

The retailer is on track to build over 300 new stores by 2035. retaildive.com

Modern LP Audits
Store Audits Are Evolving Beyond the Clipboard
For generations of loss prevention professionals, the store audit has been one of the most basic tools in the playbook. Walk the location. Review procedures. Identify weaknesses. Document findings. Follow up.

The objective hasn't changed much. The way retailers can accomplish it has.

At NRF PROTECT 2026, Guess? loss prevention executives detailed how the retailer has shifted traditional store visits toward a camera-driven virtual engagement model designed to increase coverage, consistency and speed while providing additional opportunities for coaching and follow-up.

It's an interesting example of existing LP infrastructure being used differently.

Rather than relying exclusively on scheduled physical visits, remote visibility can allow LP teams to observe shipment processing, floor supervision, customer engagement, employee awareness and other operational practices at different times.

That doesn't necessarily eliminate the need to visit stores.

There are aspects of a location that are difficult to understand remotely, and relationships with store teams still matter. But it can change how LP allocates limited field resources.

A traditional visit provides a snapshot of what is happening while the LP professional is physically present. Remote engagement can potentially provide more frequent visibility into whether procedures are being followed after the visit ends.

The larger opportunity involves moving audits away from simply identifying violations. An effective audit should help explain why a location is producing particular results.

If one store repeatedly experiences inventory discrepancies, operational failures or compliance problems, AP can use multiple sources of information to determine whether the issue involves training, execution, staffing or another underlying cause.

That makes the modern audit less about checking boxes and more about understanding behavior.

Technology may change how LP sees the store. The real value still comes from what the department does with what it sees. nrf.com

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Cosentino's Food Stores' 346% ROI and loss prevention transformation with Retail Crime Intelligence

Until 2024, family-owned Kansas City grocer Cosentino’s Food Stores had explored several solutions and vendors to address its loss prevention needs, but those efforts became increasingly unsustainable amid rising retail crime and violence.

Their previous case management system offered broken promises of crime linking and poor customer service causing Cosentino’s to reach a breaking point. Top of the list of challenges to address was decreasing the amount of time spent on event reporting and improving collaboration with law enforcement.

Now, in 2026, they have a “seamless” partnership with Auror that has helped them:

Achieve an incredible 346% return on investment (ROI)
Cut their reporting time by 90%
Significantly improved their ability to deliver event reports and evidence to police

Read more here

AI Cyber Threats
AI Is Giving Cybercriminals a Productivity Boost
Artificial intelligence doesn't need to invent an entirely new cyberattack to make retailers more vulnerable. Making existing attacks faster may be enough.

Verizon's 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report found generative AI augmenting 15 different attack techniques, with threat actors using the technology at multiple stages of attacks.

That is an important way to understand AI's near-term cybersecurity impact. Attackers can use generative tools to accelerate reconnaissance, create more convincing social-engineering content, assist with code and scale activity that previously required more time or expertise.

For retailers, scale is particularly relevant.

Large organizations may have thousands of employees, vendors, stores and endpoints. Consumer-facing brands also maintain an enormous public presence that attackers can use to make fraudulent communications appear credible.

AI can lower the amount of effort required to exploit that environment. It also makes older assumptions about suspicious communications less reliable.

Poor grammar, generic wording and awkward phrasing once served as obvious phishing warning signs. Generative tools can produce polished messages quickly and make it easier to tailor communications to a specific company, employee or situation.

But AI doesn't eliminate the importance of established cybersecurity practices. Quite the opposite.

Strong authentication, restricted privileges, patched systems, employee awareness and effective monitoring become more important when attackers can increase the speed and volume of their activity.

The human element also remains significant. Verizon's retail-specific findings showed a human element present in 58% of retail breaches, underscoring why technology and employee awareness both remain necessary.

Retailers don't necessarily need to defend against a completely new category of attack.

They need to recognize that familiar attacks can now be produced, customized and deployed more efficiently. AI may change how quickly an attack is created.

It doesn't change the basic objective of cybersecurity: prevent unauthorized access, limit what an attacker can reach and detect suspicious behavior before it becomes a major incident. verizon.com

Detroit CIOs and CISOs to Examine AI Governance, Cybersecurity Resilience, Enterprise Transformation and the Rise of the "CEO of Technology" at HMG Strategy’s September 24 Summit

The 23rd Annual Globee® Awards for Cybersecurity Invite Artificial Intelligence Security Achievement Nominations Worldwide

Post-Purchase Fraud
The E-Commerce Fraud Fight Is Moving After Checkout
Getting a legitimate payment authorization used to feel like one of the biggest hurdles in an online transaction. Increasingly, it's only the beginning.

A growing share of e-commerce risk exists after checkout, when merchandise enters fulfillment, delivery, customer service and eventually the returns process.

Claims that an order never arrived can trigger refunds. Returned boxes can contain different merchandise — or nothing of value. Customers can misrepresent quantities. Stolen or compromised accounts can complicate refund decisions.

NRF's returns research illustrates the scale of the issue.

Retailers that track individual return fraud methods reported increases in overstated return quantities, with 71% reporting growth in that tactic. Sixty-five percent reported increases in empty-box or "box of rocks" schemes and 64% reported increases in decoy returns involving counterfeit or substitute items. Overall, the study estimated that 9% of returns were fraudulent.

That changes the way e-commerce fraud needs to be viewed. A transaction that appears legitimate at checkout can still generate a loss days or weeks later.

It also means fraud teams need visibility beyond payment information.

Order history, delivery information, refund activity, return patterns, timing and account behavior can all help retailers understand whether an individual event fits a larger pattern.

The challenge is particularly difficult because many post-purchase services were deliberately designed around customer convenience.

Retailers want to resolve missing-package complaints quickly. They want returns to be simple. They don't want a loyal customer treated like a suspect because a package genuinely disappeared.

That's why post-purchase fraud increasingly becomes a data problem. The objective isn't to make every customer prove a claim.

It's to identify the small portion of activity where the broader pattern suggests the claim deserves a closer look. For e-commerce fraud teams, checkout may still be an important line of defense.

It just isn't the finish line anymore. nrf.com

Washington County, WI: $20K worth of collectibles stolen from West Bend shop.

West Bend Police are investigating after a suspect broke into a shop and stole $20,000 worth of merchandise. Shelves of Sped's Collectible shop were wiped empty early Monday morning. "It's tough, and it hurts a lot," said Spencer Foyse. Security video shows a masked man breaking in and filling his backpack with loads of merchandise. The owner of Sped's collectibles says the suspect got away with many rare Pokémon cards. "The guy came in, kind of rummaged through all my cases, took almost all of my good stuff, my expensive stuff," said Foyse. It's a major setback for the store that just opened in May. "It's pretty devastating to see because our margins and the way we do things in Pokémon, it takes a very long time for us to work our way up," said Foyse. The owner says he plans on beefing up security here inside the shop, but it will take months to recover. wisn.com

Baxter County, AR: Man with record of stealing from Walmarts appears in court.

A man who has been arrested multiple times for stealing merchandise from Walmart stores in Arkansas and Missouri appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court/Criminal Division September 8. According to the probable cause affidavit, Vagenas was tracked by surveillance cameras going into various departments, selecting items and putting them in a shopping cart. He was then seen going into the Lawn and Garden section of the store where he unlocked a door and pushed the cart out of the business with no attempt to pay for the items. The doors in that section of the store are locked each night at 7 p.m. According to investigators, the items taken were valued at almost $670. In addition to charges in Arkansas, court records show cases being opened on Vagenas in Greene, Howell, Bates and Christian Counties in Missouri. He has also faced federal charges for allegedly stealing mail. According to the probable cause affidavit in the most recent Mountain Home case, Vagenas was arrested in Pennsylvania in 2022 for theft and in 2023 for retail fraud in Michigan. ktlo.com

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Shootings & Deaths

Omaha, NE: Woman fatally shot by officers after slashing 3-year-old boy in Walmart shopping cart.

A woman armed with a kitchen knife was fatally shot by police officers Tuesday after slashing a 3-year-old boy in a shopping cart outside a Walmart in Omaha, Nebraska, authorities said. The woman, identified by police as Noemi Guzman, 31, was shot after refusing to drop the knife and then cutting the boy, according to an Omaha Police Department press release. The boy was reunited with his guardian and taken to the hospital for injuries that were not considered life-threatening, police said. The parents of Cyler Hillman, the injured child, said it has been difficult to process what happened for the family, including his siblings. "I think it's been rough, a lot of the what ifs of what if it could have gone a different way," his mother, Sara Hillman, told reporters on Wednesday. abcnews.com

Hillsborough County, FL: 16-year-old arrested in death of Florida teen shot, killed in Dick's changing room.

A 16-year-old was arrested Tuesday after investigators say his gun went off inside a fitting room at a Florida sporting goods store, killing a 15-year-old boy. Deputies with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office say 16-year-old Ahmad Webbis was booked for counts of manslaughter with a weapon in the death of 15-year-old Jaden Law. The shooting happened July 10 inside Dick's House of Sport at the Brandon Exchange. Deputies were called to the store around 4:28 p.m. after an employee reported hearing a gunshot. Deputies arrived within four minutes and found Law dead inside a fitting room. The Medical Examiner's Office determined Law died from a single gunshot wound and classified his death as a homicide. cbsaustin.com

Detroit, MI: Ali Wissam Aoun, 27, found fatally shot inside his father’s clothing store in Detroit.

A young Arab American man from Dearborn was killed in a shooting inside a store owned by his father Wednesday evening. Police found27 year old Ali Wissam Aoun, unresponsive inside Goodfellas Wear clothing store near the intersection of Chicago Blvd and Woodward. According to the available information, concerns for Aoun’s safety arose after he stopped answering his phone. His father contacted an off-duty employee and asked him to check the store and make sure his son was safe. arabamericannews.com

Norfolk, VA: One injured in shooting at Norfolk C- store

Houston, TX: Man shot near Liberty Road after corner store visit

Robberies, Incidents & Thefts

Fresno, CA: AutoZone Armed robbery suspect arrested after 8-hour standoff at Northeast Fresno home.

An armed robbery suspect has been taken into custody and is being questioned by law enforcement after an hours-long standoff at a home in Northeast Fresno. According to Fresno police, around 11:10 a.m., they responded to a call for an armed robbery at the AutoZone off Gettysburg Avenue and First Street. The clerk told officers that the suspect, a man in his 40s, came in, showed his gun and stole items from the store. Undercover Fresno police officers located nearby spotted the suspect and his vehicle in a backyard off Gettysburg Avenue. Authorities set up a perimeter around the home and closed off Gettysburg between First and Fresno streets. Drones were sent out and officers were able to see the suspect enter the home. Officers say the suspect and a woman were the only two people in the home at the time. Authorities tried to contact the suspect but were unable to. SWAT was called to assist and was able to enter the home and take the suspect into custody without incident. abc30.com

Los Angeles, CA: After 40 Hours in Line, West Hollywood Pokémon Fan Gets Robbed.

A Pokémon fan had been waiting outside Best Buy on La Brea on WeHo’s Eastside since Monday afternoon when he was robbed of his iPhone Wednesday morning. In a twist he then used the phone’s tracking feature with sheriff’s deputies to get it back. All of this happened just before the store even opened. WEHOonline got to the scene just as the doors were about to open and found the victim still holding his place near the front of the line. He was third in line, had his phone back and said he wasn’t injured. The victim, who declined to give his name, told us he had been outside the Best Buy at 1015 N. La Brea Ave. since at least 4 p.m. Monday, meaning he had been waiting more than 40 hours for Wednesday’s release of Pokémon’s 30th anniversary trading cards. wehoonline.com

Memphis, TN: Burglars steal $3k worth of items from adult store

Abbotsford, BC, Canada: Abbotsford Police recover $20,000 in suspected stolen goods

Adult – Anderson, IN – Armed Robbery

Adult – Memphis, TN - Burglary

Auto – Fresno, CA – Armed Robbery

Auto – Naples, FL – Robbery

C-Store – San Antonio, TX – Armed Robbery

C-Store – Washington, DC – Robbery

Clothing – Hoover, AL – Robbery

Dollar – Boardman, OH – Armed Robbery

Dollar – Knoxville, TN – Robbery

Dollar – Biloxi, MS - Robbery

Gaming – Trussville, AL – Robbery

Grocery – Tinley Park, IL – Robbery

Hardware - Hawarden, IA – Robbery

Jewelry – Blaine, MN – Robbery

Jewelry – Poughkeepsie, NY – Robbery

Liquor – Martin County, FL – Robbery

Storage - Allentown, PA – Burglary

Daily Totals:
• 15 robberies
• 2 burglaries
• 0 shooting
• 0 killed

Click map to enlarge

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Retail isn't lived in quarterly reports. It's lived in broken printers. Staff shortages. Late trucks. Unexpected audits. And customers who somehow managed to return a product they clearly bought somewhere else.

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