Security Issues:  Past and Present

I first wrote “Protecting the Bottom Line” in February 1984 for my monthly publication, Chuck Miller’s Loss Prevention Letter for Supermarket Executives. More than twenty years have passed, but many of the security issues are the same now as then. My first column, which I have kept all these years, described the problems retailers were having with shoplifters, liberal courts, and police officers often unwilling to answer a call to a store to arrest a shoplifter. The problems are the same for retailers today, but now they are more serious and costly.

We didn’t hear much about organized theft rings stealing billions of dollars of merchandise twenty years ago. We had shoplifters, no doubt about it – the common, ordinary type that would steal $15 or $20 of cigarettes, meat, liquor, or HABA from a supermarket. Drug stores, department stores and home improvement stores were, and still are, targeted by the ordinary shoplifter. We still have the typical shoplifter in virtually every type of retail store. By typical shoplifter, I refer to the person who shoplifts merchandise for his or her own use.

The late 80’s and early 90’s

We started to see professional shoplifting rings operating in supermarkets, drug stores, apparel stores, and general merchandise stores in the mid-eighties. Over the past five or six years, Organized Retail Crime (ORC) has grown to be a $15 billion loss to food retailers. General merchandise stores, apparel retailers, drug stores and home improvement stores together likely lose that much or more.

The ORC rings operate in most states, often traveling several hundred miles from their home base to ply their trade. The target items in supermarkets are infant formula, shaving products, health and beauty care items, film, batteries, pain relievers, and CDs. ORC rings also target department stores, home improvement centers and drug stores.

The FBI and police departments in major cities finally began listening to retail security executives a few years ago. Task forces comprised of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and retail security executives broke up major retail theft rings in Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, and several other cities. Recently, the FBI headquarters asked me to assist them in forming the FBI Ad Hoc Committee on Organized Retail Theft. The National Retail Federation (NRF) offered to host the Committee. Two meetings have been held and the Bureau and the Committee members are very pleased with the results to date. The Committee is working on establishing a database where important information on ORC rings can be stored and accessed by the FBI and participating retail firms. NRF will coordinate and oversee the database. Data will be analyzed and used by the FBI and retail security executives to determine where ORC rings are operating and the types of merchandise stolen.

The FBI, NRF, and the companies cooperating in this bold, strategic alliance are to be congratulated. This is the sort of cooperative effort we need to effectively combat the skilled criminal rings. I’ll update our readers regularly on the progress of the Committee and on other issues relating to organized crime in retailing in the US.

Chuck Miller, CPP, CSP