- "Organized" rings of theft are nothing new - groups of kids (and adults!) figure out that product X are easily acquired, aggregated, and resold and there's a mini-wave of thefts of X - a few years back it was ice cream, Tide detergent has been a thing for a while, etc. These things get sorted out through some combination of the stores making product X harder to get (glass doors, sensors) and police arresting some of the folks responsible, and it drops off quickly.
- Random shoplifting is up a lot - from seeing a lot of this in nyc, it's usually the same thing - random person (often homeless) shuffles into a store, walks to wherever, grabs something, runs on out. A couple of times I've seen a store manager look at someone coming in and say "I just want you to know I'm watching you", and they turn around and head back out
- Bail reform/defund the police is a massive red herring - from speaking with cop friends, while they're annoyed about "defund" and bail reform, there isn't actually any evidence there's any correlation between the two, other that in some cases prosecutors were using bail as a cudgel to keep low-level offenders in jail. The cops in general feel that was a feature, not a bug, despite that not being the point of bail. Otherwise, overtime is up, violent crime has mostly stabilized or gone down, reopening of the homeless shelters have made it easier for homeless people to get indoors which reduces the amount of police interaction with them. The wave of police retirements in nyc were good for everyone - police pensions are dependent on your most recent (or highest?) two years of income, so pandemic + protests mean that lots of cops are going to make more money by retiring last year vs. the coming 4-5 years with budget uncertainty. For the rest of everyone staying, more overtime.
In my neighborhood, the overall response has been for uniformed, on-duty police to be posted in a lot of the stores during high-traffic times. From chatting with managers, it's had a huge benefit. The cops think it's boring duty, but it beats being out in the cold.
All this to say - there's lots of stuff getting stolen, but it doesn't actually impact the businesses besides them locking up more stuff (it's annoying to get toothpase now). There's no grand wave of organized crime, at least any more than there was before. Cops are not "under siege". Everything is fine relative to everything else that's on fire in the world right now.