NRF retracts its assertion that organized retail crime led to 50% of losses
stateline.org
stateline.org
It is hard to fully understand what caused the disconnect from reality.
Here's a good NPR piece discussing the issue: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/12/18/is-shoplifting-getti...
I was under the impression that two thirds of shrinkage was from employees to begin with. Either through error or theft.
Could someone help me understand what I’m missing?
If I’m reading it correctly, they exaggerated the amount of _organized_ crime.
This article seems to say the amount of shoplifting that was attributable to organized crime was 5% when originally they claimed it was 50%.
My understanding from that is that we originally estimated disorganized shoplifting to be less than 50% of missing merchandise, and organized crime was making up at least half.
In other words, the crime statistics are the same, but it’s actually randos walking into a CVS and stealing stuff.
That doesn’t seem like it is better?
It will lead to more people saying things along the lines of "They're only stealing so they can feed their families (oh and by the way this is "capitalism's" fault you should totally support the socialist/communist policies that I do)" but yeah otherwise it doesn't change the facts on the ground much.
Edit: not that the thefts are nothing, but there is no surge, increase, things are not getting worse, thieves are not bolder, etc…
If it was organized crime, the likely answer is investigations and law enforcement presence. You would have specific centralized targets to take out and restore order.
If it’s instead a widespread epidemic of individual shoplifting, the issue is going to be social (or likely socioeconomic, in any reasonable guess) and probably requires a complex solution that is way out of the hands of what retailers can reliably put resources towards.
This is important information for the businesses, their shareholders, the communities they are located in, the politicians serving those communities and likely many other minor interested parties.
Certain media outlets are interested in making major cities, which lean left, to appear to be lawless hellholes in order to gather support for anti-leftist policy and candidates.
There is also the right wing exaggeration, but at the same time if you live in Ballard of Seattle, you’ll see it happen at least weekly, if not more. Whether it’s organized or not is more of a behind scenes thing.
The article opens with this quote: "The National Retail Federation earlier this month retracted its April assertion that nearly half of the $94.5 billion in merchandise that went missing in 2021 was stolen by retail rings."
It later clarifies that the $94.5 billion number that the NRF used is the "total shrinkage" - i.e. all unexpected inventory loss including theft (but not just theft).
> "Overall shrink accounted for $112.1 billion in losses in 2022, up from $93.9 billion in 2021 [This is where the $94.5 billion number comes from I believe]. Internal and external theft of all kinds, “on par with previous years,” accounted for about two-thirds — or $73 billion — of retailers’ shrinkage"
So they released a statement that implied that theft was up ~28% year over year (by using total shrinkage instead of the theft numbers), and that organized groups were responsible for half of the total theft. The truth is that theft was more or less the same as last year.
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/11/is-retail-theft-reall...
It's still an _absolutely insane_ amount.
This page[0] lists the 2022 shrinkage for a few companies, and said Target was at $753M. Target is a huge national brand. Are there really ~100x more companies of Target's size experiencing equal shrinkage annually? How does the math work to get to $95B?
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/08/this-is-how-much-money-retai...
So we're talking .1% of retail revenue. Not that I'm fond of thieves, let alone organized ones, but it does not seem an existential threat to me at this level.
As a comparison, eliminating cashiers in favor of automated checkout solutions is estimated to a loss of about 1% of revenue: https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/technology/self-chec...
Retailers were only too happy to have a running excuse for store closures, usually a sign of uncompetitiveness that negatively affects the stock price.
Either the retailers are being brain-dead by discouraging purchases or theft is a massive real problem.
> Either the retailers are being brain-dead by discouraging purchases or theft is a massive real problem.
In NYC Walgreens locations, the store brand versions for many products are not actually locked up, but the branded versions are and require you to wait for an employee.
It's a subtle move, but once you're aware of it you see how prevalent it is.
It seems like a "piss in your pants to keep yourself warm"-strategy.
If I’m reading it correctly, they’ve only retracted their statements about the amount of missing merchandise attributable to organized crime.
This article does not seem to dispute the volume of missing merchandise or the volume of retail theft, only the amount of that attributable to organized crime.
With large organized criminal gangs providing financial incentives to independent opportunistic thieves, then it's all absolutely organized crime.
It's absurd to suggest otherwise. If an organized gang or cartel pays a independent opportunistic hitman to kill a target, it's organized crime.
San Francisco has extremely large fencing operations that operate with impunity right on the open street! They buy items all the way from single items of soap and hand wash all the way up to stolen TVs. The feds are doing nothing for some reason. [1]
[1] https://sfist.com/2023/09/23/a-known-fencing-operation-for-s...
I’ve read the article three times now and I can’t find this claim. Do you have a quote?
What I can find in this article is experts saying that there’s a lot of unknowns and police & co who just got shiny new toys based on the myth pinky promising that there truly is an organized crime issue.
Whatever the case, you can’t deny that the doom images pretending that hordes are storming a store at every corner are widely exaggerated.
> San Francisco has extremely large fencing operations that operate with impunity right on the open street! They buy items all the way from single items of soap and hand wash all the way up to stolen TVs. The feds are doing nothing for some reason. [1]
The article you linked explicitly states that there’s a joint sting operation. That’s not “doing nothing” that’s gathering evidence to build a case.
Sure, specifically, the article says "more than 95% percent of shoplifting incidents are carried out by “one to two people,” -- implying this means it is not organized crime, even if the goods are sold to a large organized fencing operation.
1-2 people shoplifting does not disprove organized crime, particularly if the goods are immediately sold to organized fences.
>The article you linked explicitly states that there’s a joint sting operation
No, it doesn't. Please read it again. It poses a question of whether it's a sting operation, which seems unlikely given stolen goods have been GPS tracked going to that location and then going to third locations once sold, including by large YouTubers who independently investigated. [1]
The goods are not seized by law enforcement and then returned to owners at that location. The stolen goods are sold, which would be a crime in itself. Seems unlikely that police are on-selling stolen merchandise.
That paragraph specifically talks about statements made by someone from the Council on Criminal Justice on “smash-and-grab” operations by rings that storm department stores.
It neither confirms or denies anything about organized crime in general.
That said, you seem overly focused on the lack of disproving things, whereas commonly the good practice is to focus on proving things.
For example it’s also not disproven that this is done by retail competitors to hassle competitors, nor is it disproven that space aliens are behind this because they need the merchandise for sustenance. Nor are any multitude of possibilities disproven.
That doesn’t mean it makes sense to entertain such ideas. Even when here and there a PD reports instances of it occurring. We need something more statistically significant.
> Although videos of “smash-and-grab” rings storming department stores have ratcheted up concern about theft, a recent report by Lopez’s organization found that such incidents “are rare and account for a very small percentage of overall shoplifting,” said the analyst. More than 95% percent of shoplifting incidents are carried out by “one to two people,” he said.
> No, it doesn't. Please read it again. It poses a question of whether it's a sting operation, which seems unlikely given stolen goods have been GPS tracked going to that location and then going to third locations once sold, including by large YouTubers who independently investigated. [1] The goods are not seized by law enforcement and then returned to owners at that location. The stolen goods are sold, which would be a crime in itself. Seems unlikely that police are on-selling stolen merchandise.
It literally states:
> ABC 7 reached out to Supervisor Dean Preston's office, and they replied with a statement: ""Our office has repeatedly engaged departments about the various challenges on the 300 block of Leavenworth and our understanding is that this block is part of a joint field operation that includes various departments and the SFPD."
This is a SF legislator states “our understanding is that this block is part of a joint field operation that includes various departments”, after having contacted various departments.
They’re not saying “we wonder if”, they’re saying that to their knowledge there is a joint operation going on.
As for goods not being seized and returned to their owners, I don’t know what to tell you, other than that’s how sting operations on a bigger scale work. LE is after the people at the top or tried to build a case with high amounts to ensure harsh convictions, they’re not going to jeopardize that by returning a single laptop to their owner.
A quick Google seems to support this notion: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/18k-stolen-goods...
Even when it comes to drugs, which is arguably more dangerous, they often let it go (whether in a controlled manner or not) to build a case against a bigger fish.
Including? So what other things is it from if organized theft is only like 5%.
Other losses include things expiring, getting misplaced, miscounted, etc.
Say, for example, a shipment is received and signed for, but there were only 99 boxes, not 100. Or maybe one of the boxes has the wrong product.
It could easily get overlooked for a long time and only really show up at a point when it's anyone's guess as to whether it was stolen, lost or never received.
That doesn't happen as often, but it does happen.
Is there any criticism of the laws that were passed as a result of this lie?
> At least one state — Texas — enacted two laws, one creating a task force and the other allowing potential thieves to avoid prosecution if they agree to an education course designed to steer them away from breaking the law.
> Republican state Sen. Aaron Freeman authored the law in Indiana, which makes the organized retail theft of firearms or at least $50,000 in merchandise a Level 5 felony, which carries a penalty of up to six years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
> Prosecutors and authorities also describe a menacing picture in Alabama, which this year enacted a law that allows law enforcement and prosecutors to cross jurisdictional lines to pursue bands of thieves who hit retailers in multiple cities.
These aren't laws hurting the average person or even people doing petty theft, they target organized crime. Now it seems the organized crime isn't as common as the stores claim, but the laws are fine; the main issue I see is a waste of time and resources, but I don't even think that is happening with these laws.
In other words, what motive do retailers have to lie?
Time never moves slower than waiting for an indeterminate time, possibly forever, for someone to come to open the plexiglass for you, especially as you're not even sure the button you pressed to call for help even worked.
It still makes sense to lock up your inventory if you're seeing a high rate of theft, regardless of whether it's organized crime or not.
When I see this I can’t help but think that these big box retailers are in a death spiral.
Onsite management is handed a recipe to implement, told someone is showing up to install locks in everything to, not because a specific store might need it but to normalize business operations with their paranoia.
Your experience is a reflection of their desire to normalize rather than customize
Data is only useful to a point. Generate all the stats you want. Millions of other stats attenuate the usefulness of any given stat, except for those of broad application. Getting super granular is programming equivalent of bike shedding and yak shaving.
Take a look at what CVS disclosed in official shareholder reports
> Whether they report those publicly is another story
Well, no, if they have evidence of a massive material increase in organized shoplifting and don't disclose that, it's securities fraud. Conversely, if they make false material claims in direct shareholder reports, that's also fraud.
In shareholder disclosures, yes. Which is, incidentally, where they have never made any of the claims the NRF is making! Those have been limited to PR statements with no legal obligations.
Who do you think the NRF consists of?
The fact that Duane Reade locks everything up now isn't evidence of anything; the people making those decisions are by definition the same ones influencing the NRF.
Does the Walgreens you’re talking about lock up everything, including the candy?
If so, what’s it like at that store. Does every patron get a personal chaperone or is the store filled with patrons waiting for an associate who does the rounds to show up?
its obviously just a stop gap solution to exiting the market entirely since these stores no longer operate in a market based economy where property rights are enforced, so just close up instead of operating a crippled store hanging on by a thread, inconveniencing random swaths of their remaining customers just because an excel spreadsheet said so
What is the penalty for lying purposely against a population that cannot afford lawyers for filing a defamation suit?
What lies specifically are you referencing?
My understanding of this article is not that they retracted their assertions about the amount of missing merchandise.
My understanding is that they withdrew their assertion that half of the total missing merchandise was attributable to organized crime.
1) “missing merchandise” or “shrinkage” if you prefer ≠ theft
2) they, and subsequently the media, heavily implied retail theft was on the rise and not just that, but specifically “boogeyman style theft” even though theft numbers have remained the same