Retailers ramp up security, cities reroute traffic to combat organized theft rings

Best Buy shoppers can expect to find more quality merchandise behind closed shelves and a greater security presence in certain stores.

Along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, two private security companies patrol the posh shopping district in response to attempted robberies in Louis Vuitton and Saks Fifth Avenue last weekend.

After a spate of theft and vandalism last Friday night in nearly a dozen stores, including Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Bloomingdale’s, city officials in Union Square in San Francisco announced that traffic patterns were being readjusted near high-end retailers so thieves t just park, commit a robbery and then race.

“We’re going to do what we have to do to put an end to this madness,” San Francisco Police Chief William Scott told reporters.

An ongoing fear of coordinated large-scale robberies is rocking retailers not only in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, where videos of such thefts have gone viral, but also in affluent suburbs that are typically untargeted and run in the tens of thousands of dollars arise products.

Corporations, malls, and law enforcement agencies are weighing what safeguards to take when shoppers start packing their deals on the busiest shopping days ahead of them, including Black Friday, and amid an economic backdrop of higher prices and shipping delays. A recent survey by research firm The NPD Group found that online sales are returning to pre-pandemic levels and brick and mortar stores are regaining their share of the retail market as shoppers long to return to the personal experience.

But the risk of smash-and-grab incidents in already busy stores can be “a dangerous rodeo,” said Read Hayes, a criminologist at the University of Florida and director of the Loss Prevention Research Council, a retail trade group.

Last Saturday, about 80 people searched a Nordstrom store in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek and drove away with goods in a bold flash mob style. Five employees suffered minor injuries and three people were arrested shortly afterwards, the police said.

Walnut Creek officials have increased the city’s police presence and closed a street to cars to deter copycats.

“If it means we’re going to reroute roads, if it means we have more police on the streets and more security, whatever it is, every option is on the table,” said Walnut Creek Mayor Kevin Wilk , across from NBC Bay Area.

He also told NBC News that investigators are investigating how social media has apparently been used to orchestrate organized retail robberies.

Officials in San Francisco have vowed to persecute those responsible. District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced that nine people were arrested Tuesday in connection with Union Square thefts and other cases.

Three people were also arrested early Tuesday after a large group tried to break into a nordstrom at The Grove mall in Los Angeles after hours. A sledgehammer was found at the scene.

Based on the incidents in Los Angeles and Walnut Creek, Nordstrom said it “positions security guards inside and outside of our stores and works closely with shopping mall security and law enforcement to anticipate and mitigate risk.”

There will also be more response training for employees, and the retailer, which has 100 full-service stores nationwide, said it is “strengthening our security presence in stores and implementing additional safeguards to keep everyone safe”.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced this week that he would assign “significantly more” law enforcement officers to busy retail corridors, and the California Highway Patrol’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force said it would increase its presence near highways adjacent to major shopping malls .

In August, Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill that will fund the task force until the end of 2025 and focus on “the ringleaders and conspirators of these criminal networks, not the low-level petty thief.” He said he plans to propose more funds in the next fiscal year budget for fighting organized retail theft across the country.

Newsom, who owns a hospitality company that owns wine stores and restaurants, said he knew firsthand how destructive criminal activity can be after its business was broken into three times this year.

“I have no pity, no empathy for people who smash and grab, steal people’s items, wreak havoc and terror on our streets,” Newsom told reporters. “We want real accountability, we want people to be prosecuted and we want people to feel safe this Christmas season.”

To deter criminals, Hayes said there can be a number of tools available to retailers. He added that in addition to increasing security presence, it also uses technology that can render a stolen item ineffective unless it is activated upon purchase, goods locked or tied, products positioned in strategic locations that make it more difficult to flee with them, and also to train employees to be more vigilant and at the same time engaged in customer service.

“There has been a Flash Rob / Flash Mob action for a long time,” said Hayes, “but this is the boldest one I’ve ever seen.”

Authorities and retail experts say these more aggressive measures could be partly due to retailers also cracking down on criminal activity like shoplifting. There is also money made by these organized retail rings that can amass millions of dollars worth of products and sell them online or in other countries, with the proceeds being washed back to the United States.

The Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, a trade association, estimates that retail organized crime results in approximately $ 45 billion in losses for retailers each year, with more than $ 500 billion in illegally stolen and counterfeited goods on third-party platforms like Amazon are sold.

“When they hit me, they could sell at flea markets and to friends, but it’s easier now,” said Georganne Bender, an Illinois retail consultant who ran a women’s boutique along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile business district in the 1980s. “There’s eBay and Poshmark and tons of other places.”

Bender said smaller retailers may need to consider solutions like locking doors and letting a limited number of guests in at the same time or the need for appointments, but those options aren’t shopper-friendly and “either way, it’s a mob that does Wants to enter the store “. will get in. “

Best Buy CEO Corie Barry, who on a phone call this week lamented the string of high-profile heists across the retail industry, said Tuesday on CNBC that she wasn’t sure what was driving the crimes but they remain difficult to stop.

“We’re finding ways we can lock the product but still have a good customer experience,” said Barry on the conference call. “In some cases we employ security guards. We are working with our suppliers on creative ways to showcase the product.”

As retailers denounce the thefts, the wave of incidents has been highlighted by industry groups to call for a tightening of laws that they believe has been relaxed to the detriment of businesses as some cities and states move to decriminalize certain low-level crimes.

In California, property and violent crime have dropped to historic lows in recent years. And experts say it remains to be seen what long-term impact factors like the pandemic and community-police friction will have on organized retail theft and how far it will spread.

Retail advisor Bender said stores are only busy focusing on what’s coming: a big weekend shopping.

“There are already plenty of landmines in place for retailers to stop shoplifters in order to get enough goods,” she said.

“This is a huge weekend for these businesses that want people to come in and feel comfortable and happy,” she added, “without thinking in the back of their minds that they are being attacked by a pack of thieves.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/retailers-ramp-security-cities-reroute-traffic-combat-organized-theft-rcna6476