WEBVTT - The Rise of Organized Retail Crime at Big Box Stores 0:00:03.880 --> 0:00:06.420 Hello, Odd Lodge listeners. I'm Joe Wiesenthal. 0:00:06.620 --> 0:00:07.560 And I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:07.700 --> 0:00:10.270 We're the hosts of the Odd Lodge podcast, and we've 0:00:10.310 --> 0:00:11.489 got something exciting for you. 0:00:11.770 --> 0:00:13.970 That's right. So one of the best parts of hosting 0:00:14.070 --> 0:00:16.830 our podcast is we get to actually meet and interact 0:00:16.950 --> 0:00:19.709 with our listeners. And we know we have some listeners 0:00:19.850 --> 0:00:20.989 over in Los Angeles. 0:00:21.170 --> 0:00:21.550 That's right. 0:00:21.570 --> 0:00:24.290 So if you're in L.A., we're going to be recording 0:00:24.470 --> 0:00:28.100 a live show, some live recordings at the Vermont Theater 0:00:28.140 --> 0:00:29.520 in Hollywood on September 17th. 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.000 We have some really exciting guests lined up, have some 0:00:33.140 --> 0:00:36.450 really great conversations planned. So go ahead and get your tickets. 0:00:36.470 --> 0:00:39.890 You can find those over at Bloomberg.com forward slash oddlots 0:00:40.030 --> 0:00:42.529 or click the link below in the show notes and 0:00:42.690 --> 0:00:43.750 come and say hi when you're there. 0:00:49.490 --> 0:00:53.970 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. 0:01:05.340 --> 0:01:08.069 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Thoughts Podcast. 0:01:08.250 --> 0:01:09.030 I'm Traci Allaway. 0:01:09.230 --> 0:01:10.369 And I'm Joe Weisenthal. 0:01:10.630 --> 0:01:14.440 Joe, we did an episode recently with Reid Lustelo, the 0:01:14.459 --> 0:01:16.940 chief marketing officer over at the Truck Parking Club. 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:17.039 Yeah. 0:01:17.140 --> 0:01:19.220 And that was a great episode about the— Super fun. 0:01:19.260 --> 0:01:23.380 The rebound in trucking. But he mentioned one thing and 0:01:23.420 --> 0:01:25.979 he did it in a sort of offhand way. And 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.259 it really piqued my interest. He basically said that cargo 0:01:29.300 --> 0:01:33.039 theft had become this huge deal. And it wasn't just, 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.700 you know, some guys stealing boxes off the back of trucks, 0:01:36.770 --> 0:01:38.330 which is kind of what I have in my head. 0:01:38.350 --> 0:01:38.630 Same. 0:01:38.910 --> 0:01:42.590 It was people spoofing actual carriers or pretending to be 0:01:42.610 --> 0:01:47.190 a carrier and then picking up entire cargo loads of inventory. 0:01:47.209 --> 0:01:47.289 Yeah. 0:01:47.630 --> 0:01:49.440 And presumably reselling it. 0:01:49.630 --> 0:01:53.060 No, that totally blew my mind. I mean, it makes sense, right? Like, okay, 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:55.520 if we're talking in the U.S., there's tens of thousands 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:59.100 of trucking companies. And so the degree to which any 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.350 shipper could really know any carrier is probably kind of loose, 0:02:02.390 --> 0:02:04.650 et cetera. It's like, yeah, why not just sort of 0:02:04.690 --> 0:02:07.290 like spring up one day and you know, get some 0:02:07.330 --> 0:02:09.269 shipments and then take them on your own way. It 0:02:09.570 --> 0:02:11.570 makes a lot of sense, but definitely not what I 0:02:11.610 --> 0:02:14.230 would have had in mind, as you said, about what 0:02:14.310 --> 0:02:16.400 a cargo theft meant up until that point. 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.480 Well, since then, I keep seeing these headlines popping up. 0:02:19.540 --> 0:02:21.740 There was a great Bloomberg story the other day actually 0:02:21.780 --> 0:02:26.060 called The Great Modern Train Robbery Thieves Steal $ 200 Million 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:29.690 a Year Off of Railway Cars. And so you can see, like, 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:33.429 This seems to be a big deal. We know, living 0:02:33.530 --> 0:02:36.730 in New York, that it feels like shoplifting has become 0:02:36.770 --> 0:02:40.290 a bigger deal in recent years after the pandemic. And 0:02:40.350 --> 0:02:42.609 we can debate whether or not the statistics bear that out. 0:02:42.650 --> 0:02:44.670 But certainly, if you walk down the street and you 0:02:44.710 --> 0:02:48.500 go into our local Duane Reade, everything's locked up, right? 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:48.839 Right. 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:53.160 That's the sort of core thing. There's probably various ways 0:02:53.260 --> 0:02:57.040 to massage statistics and all kinds of stuff. 0:02:57.500 --> 0:02:58.030 But whatever. 0:02:58.669 --> 0:03:00.330 It's not good. I see them locking this stuff up. 0:03:00.350 --> 0:03:02.690 They're locking it up. They must know that customers, by 0:03:02.710 --> 0:03:05.450 and large, hate it, right? They must know that it 0:03:05.870 --> 0:03:10.919 decreases labor productivity, having to have staffers in the store. 0:03:10.940 --> 0:03:12.120 You have to ring the bell and wait. 0:03:12.139 --> 0:03:14.579 Yeah, get a deodorant. They can't think that that's a 0:03:14.620 --> 0:03:17.880 great operation. So if they're doing it. I presume there 0:03:17.900 --> 0:03:18.700 are some real issues there. 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:20.530 Well, we're going to get into all of it today. 0:03:20.590 --> 0:03:22.829 We'll do the sort of low level locking stuff up 0:03:22.990 --> 0:03:25.910 on shelves all the way to the high level pretending 0:03:25.990 --> 0:03:29.720 to be an entire trucking company and stealing someone's inventory 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:31.860 that way. And I'm glad to say we have the 0:03:31.900 --> 0:03:34.579 perfect guest to try to understand all of this. We're 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.220 going to be speaking with Scott Glenn. He is the 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:41.170 vice president of asset protection over at The Home Depot 0:03:41.250 --> 0:03:44.750 and an organized retail crime expert. So truly the perfect 0:03:44.790 --> 0:03:46.940 person to speak to. Scott, thank you so much for 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:47.720 coming on Odd Lots. 0:03:48.150 --> 0:03:48.970 Yeah, thanks, guys. 0:03:49.010 --> 0:03:53.150 Thanks for having me. I appreciate the expert designation. I'm 0:03:53.730 --> 0:03:55.330 not so sure I can live up to that, but 0:03:55.350 --> 0:03:55.990 I'll do my best. 0:03:56.270 --> 0:03:59.170 I love that you're wearing the Home Depot apron as well. 0:03:59.590 --> 0:04:01.670 Yeah, look, it's part of our culture. It's part of 0:04:01.710 --> 0:04:02.170 what we are. 0:04:02.190 --> 0:04:04.450 You can see our values over our heart is an 0:04:04.490 --> 0:04:08.290 intentional thing. Today's earnings day for Home Depot, and so 0:04:08.330 --> 0:04:09.710 we're all supporting the cause. 0:04:10.430 --> 0:04:12.750 All right, first question, and then we can get into 0:04:12.870 --> 0:04:17.060 maybe more serious topics. But what's the most stolen item 0:04:17.300 --> 0:04:18.059 from Home Depot? 0:04:18.540 --> 0:04:19.600 Volume or dollars? 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:20.820 Well, let's do both. 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:21.779 Let's do both. 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:26.260 So I would say volume, it's typically something like a 0:04:26.300 --> 0:04:26.900 power drill. 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:28.460 You see a lot of that. 0:04:29.100 --> 0:04:31.940 And then when you start to get into dollars, believe 0:04:31.980 --> 0:04:35.120 it or not, copper and wire have a lot of 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:36.800 the commodity. 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:37.200 Value out there. 0:04:37.260 --> 0:04:39.800 And so we see people come in, they'll take a 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:42.140 lot of that stuff out of the building and try 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.040 to resell it or use it on jobs, things like that. 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.310 But yeah, so certainly those are certainly two of the 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:46.640 bigger ones. 0:04:46.930 --> 0:04:50.050 Joe, someone broke into... There's a museum close to where 0:04:50.089 --> 0:04:52.909 I am in Connecticut called the Nathan Hale Museum, an 0:04:53.010 --> 0:04:56.330 old colonial homestead. Someone broke into it recently and stole 0:04:56.350 --> 0:04:57.409 a bunch of copper pipes. 0:04:57.470 --> 0:05:00.279 Are you serious? Like old pipes that were. 0:05:00.580 --> 0:05:04.300 Apparently it was in the house next to it, but... 0:05:04.460 --> 0:05:06.580 It was still pretty upsetting for everyone, you know, a 0:05:06.620 --> 0:05:08.360 historic home getting. 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:08.820 Hit for copper. 0:05:09.180 --> 0:05:11.950 It happens everywhere. When I joined Home Depot eight years 0:05:12.029 --> 0:05:13.190 ago and I moved into. 0:05:13.050 --> 0:05:15.610 My house, between the time I closed on my house 0:05:15.650 --> 0:05:17.850 and the time that I moved into the house, they 0:05:17.870 --> 0:05:21.560 took all the copper out of the HVAC units and 0:05:21.620 --> 0:05:25.000 all the pieces of it. So it is definitely a 0:05:25.060 --> 0:05:28.180 commodity that fluctuates in price. And when the price goes up, 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:29.920 it becomes really valuable to the bad guys. 0:05:30.140 --> 0:05:32.740 Well, that's actually a great thing. So you mentioned you've 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:35.930 been at the Home Depot for eight years. But why 0:05:35.940 --> 0:05:38.170 don't you give us a quick like sort of overview 0:05:38.190 --> 0:05:40.950 of your career, what your role is, why we're talking 0:05:40.990 --> 0:05:44.070 to you, like what's been the main thing that have 0:05:44.390 --> 0:05:45.310 landed you in this chair? 0:05:45.810 --> 0:05:46.510 Yeah. 0:05:46.589 --> 0:05:50.410 So I would tell you, surprised that I'm in this chair. 0:05:50.430 --> 0:05:51.890 I went to school to be an architect when I 0:05:51.910 --> 0:05:55.840 was going into college and realized that I wasn't very 0:05:55.860 --> 0:05:58.740 good at math. So I decided to maybe go work 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:00.880 for the FBI. And I got into the criminal justice 0:06:00.900 --> 0:06:03.300 side of the business. I was always fascinated by the law. 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:05.360 I ended up going to law school after college and 0:06:06.100 --> 0:06:08.469 did that route. But I started working with the Treasury 0:06:08.490 --> 0:06:10.810 Department right out of law school and worked for the 0:06:10.850 --> 0:06:13.770 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. realized that I did 0:06:13.810 --> 0:06:15.290 not like government service. 0:06:15.450 --> 0:06:16.729 It just wasn't my gig. 0:06:16.770 --> 0:06:18.650 It wasn't what I wanted to do forever. And so 0:06:19.270 --> 0:06:22.090 I had during summers, during school, I had worked at 0:06:22.150 --> 0:06:24.979 Target and caught shoplifters. So just kind of a side, 0:06:25.250 --> 0:06:27.779 you know, make some money gig. And luckily, I was 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.020 able to get back my foot in the door with 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.680 Target after I left the government and worked for them 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:34.099 and just worked my way up through the ranks. So 0:06:34.700 --> 0:06:38.140 Been here, been at Kohl's department stores for 10 years. 0:06:38.220 --> 0:06:40.460 I was at Sears for 10 years as a CSO. 0:06:40.540 --> 0:06:43.040 And then I came back here to Home Depot eight 0:06:43.060 --> 0:06:43.500 years ago. 0:06:43.700 --> 0:06:46.080 So before we go any further, why don't we define 0:06:46.170 --> 0:06:48.770 our terms? When we talk about retail theft, I imagine 0:06:48.810 --> 0:06:53.130 this covers a range of activities from, you know, someone 0:06:53.650 --> 0:06:59.310 innocently perhaps forgetting to scan their deodorant at self-checkout to 0:06:59.650 --> 0:07:05.599 really organized, seemingly very ambitious heist. What are we talking 0:07:05.620 --> 0:07:08.359 about exactly here? How do you kind of categorize retail 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:09.160 theft in your head? 0:07:09.620 --> 0:07:12.080 Yeah, it's a spectrum to your point. There's definitely low 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:16.640 level opportunistic, I'll even call it the need shoplifters that 0:07:16.660 --> 0:07:18.260 are out there. They just can't afford things. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:19.340 And we know that happens. 0:07:19.420 --> 0:07:22.720 And that's not what I would say acceptable to us, 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:24.580 but it's also not our focus. It's not the place 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:26.100 where we spend a lot of our energy and our 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:30.920 tactics up to the most sophisticated criminal organizations that are 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:36.680 out there. And I mean, sophisticated, cartel-related, transnational gang-related international 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:42.370 organizations whose sole existence is to monetize theft to do 0:07:42.510 --> 0:07:47.610 other bad things, whether that's money laundering, drug trafficking, human trafficking. 0:07:47.790 --> 0:07:50.530 And these are absolutely known things that are happening out there. 0:07:51.110 --> 0:07:54.260 So there's a lot of space in between that, and 0:07:54.420 --> 0:07:56.580 it runs the gamut. But we tend to focus our 0:07:56.620 --> 0:07:59.640 time and our energy and our resources on the higher end. 0:07:59.980 --> 0:08:02.420 While we're in the business of defining terms here, I 0:08:02.460 --> 0:08:06.020 think this is helpful. A word like shrinkage is one 0:08:06.050 --> 0:08:09.950 that comes up. Would shrinkage only apply to, okay, the 0:08:09.990 --> 0:08:12.450 person who walks into a store and manages to walk 0:08:12.610 --> 0:08:15.190 out with a power drill or something like that? Or 0:08:15.630 --> 0:08:19.420 is it counted in shrinkage statistics if it's like a very– 0:08:19.670 --> 0:08:22.040 complex heist of an entire truck that never makes it 0:08:22.100 --> 0:08:22.920 to the destination. 0:08:23.190 --> 0:08:26.480 When we talk about shrink in retail, we're talking about 0:08:26.900 --> 0:08:29.180 at the end of the day, I have inventory on 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:32.120 my books. And when I physically go to count that inventory, 0:08:32.140 --> 0:08:34.240 it's not there. There's a lot of different ways that 0:08:34.260 --> 0:08:36.940 could happen. That is not just the bad guys coming 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.679 in and stealing stuff. So when we talk about things 0:08:40.740 --> 0:08:43.220 within our world here, when I talk with our leadership 0:08:43.260 --> 0:08:45.160 and I talk to our board, We break it out 0:08:45.220 --> 0:08:49.630 into what we call operational or controllable administrative types of strength, 0:08:50.030 --> 0:08:52.310 and then what we call the malicious. And another way 0:08:52.350 --> 0:08:54.070 to look at that is might be like things we 0:08:54.110 --> 0:08:57.170 do to ourself versus things people do to us. And 0:08:57.190 --> 0:08:59.730 that's the way we tend to categorize that ratio. 0:08:59.790 --> 0:09:00.260 And for us. 0:09:00.670 --> 0:09:02.530 I'm not going to say this is for everybody at retail, 0:09:02.570 --> 0:09:05.580 but for us, we're pretty good at controlling the operational 0:09:05.620 --> 0:09:08.380 side of the business. So about 30 percent of our 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.360 shrink is falls into that operational administrative things we do 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.280 to ourself type of category. And then the balance of 0:09:15.340 --> 0:09:17.530 it falls into more of the malicious side or things 0:09:17.570 --> 0:09:18.650 that people do to us. 0:09:19.010 --> 0:09:21.450 That's very helpful. And then one more question on this 0:09:21.710 --> 0:09:26.520 in the broader category of retail theft. Do you have 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:31.740 a split on how much happens in store versus somewhere else, 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.040 whether it's one of the distribution center, warehouse, et cetera, 0:09:34.420 --> 0:09:35.929 versus somewhere else on the supply chain? 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.199 Yeah, so we actually break out our shrink in the 0:09:39.260 --> 0:09:41.800 supply chain separately. Then we break out our shrink in 0:09:41.820 --> 0:09:44.340 the retail environments versus the way we break out our 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:47.420 shrink in our online environment. So we actually have three 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:50.550 different buckets of where the shrink can happen that roll 0:09:50.630 --> 0:09:52.949 up to our larger. Now, in the supply chain, you 0:09:52.970 --> 0:09:55.510 can have operational, financial, and malicious shrink. In the stores, 0:09:55.530 --> 0:09:57.990 you can have operational, financial, and malicious shrink. And online, 0:09:58.030 --> 0:09:59.270 you can have operational, financial. 0:09:59.309 --> 0:09:59.929 And malicious shrink. 0:10:00.030 --> 0:10:02.530 So that all rolls up to the big number. But 0:10:02.590 --> 0:10:05.580 the biggest chunk of it, to your point, does exist 0:10:05.620 --> 0:10:08.780 in the 2,400 stores, retail stores that we have out there. 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:09.840 Got it. 0:10:09.860 --> 0:10:12.959 So give us a sense of the overall shrink problem 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:15.160 versus how much of it is malicious, how much of 0:10:15.220 --> 0:10:18.480 it is operational across the industry. And is it true 0:10:18.500 --> 0:10:21.860 that that retail theft has become more of an issue. 0:10:21.900 --> 0:10:24.780 Because again, you see these statistics, you see the headlines 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:29.350 target closing two stores because of rising crime, or you 0:10:29.390 --> 0:10:31.630 see a company come out and say, oh, our shrink 0:10:31.670 --> 0:10:34.230 has gone up this year. But to your point, it 0:10:34.309 --> 0:10:37.410 could be because maybe they're just worse at keeping track 0:10:37.450 --> 0:10:40.040 of their inventory than they were the year before. So 0:10:40.380 --> 0:10:42.400 give us some context around how big a problem this 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:44.580 is and whether or not it's been getting worse. 0:10:45.429 --> 0:10:49.330 You're getting to probably the most debated question in retail 0:10:49.410 --> 0:10:53.500 asset protection, loss prevention, which is... And I wish I 0:10:53.530 --> 0:10:56.540 could give you a clean answer on that. 0:10:56.580 --> 0:10:59.120 I can't. I can tell you... Maybe I'll start at 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:02.200 the top and say... How big is it? It's in 0:11:02.220 --> 0:11:02.740 the billions. 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:06.520 It's in the tens of billions. The shrink problem. There's 0:11:06.540 --> 0:11:10.380 a lot of different estimates out there. Our cohorts, my peers, 0:11:10.470 --> 0:11:14.150 my friends and peer retailers, we all talk about this. 0:11:14.210 --> 0:11:15.929 We work with Rilo. We work with NRF. 0:11:15.970 --> 0:11:17.290 We work with all to try to get the best 0:11:17.370 --> 0:11:21.620 estimates on what this number is, but how people categorize shrink. 0:11:22.220 --> 0:11:26.380 What somebody calls operational shrink versus administrative versus malicious can 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:31.400 vary by retailers. And so you've got the retail component of... 0:11:30.740 --> 0:11:33.860 We are a retail accounting operation. There are companies that 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:37.040 are on cost accounting. And so making that transition between 0:11:37.070 --> 0:11:39.970 the dollars and how do you include markup and to 0:11:40.010 --> 0:11:42.770 get to a number, very, very complicated number. 0:11:42.809 --> 0:11:44.110 What I can tell you is that. 0:11:45.010 --> 0:11:46.670 There's these numbers that have been around as long as 0:11:46.710 --> 0:11:50.290 I've been doing this in retail, which is like 40% 0:11:50.290 --> 0:11:53.500 of shrink on the malicious side is done by associates 0:11:53.700 --> 0:11:54.699 working for the company. 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:56.380 They cause 40% of your loss. 0:11:56.380 --> 0:12:01.050 35% are people walking into your store and causing it. 0:12:01.140 --> 0:12:05.370 And 20, 25, whatever the balance is, is that self-inflicted 0:12:05.490 --> 0:12:09.950 operational administrative types of shrink. And so Those numbers add flow. 0:12:10.010 --> 0:12:12.710 They go every year. There's surveys that are done. They 0:12:12.750 --> 0:12:14.250 might go up a couple of percentage. They might go 0:12:14.270 --> 0:12:17.330 down a couple of percentages. What I can speak to 0:12:17.929 --> 0:12:22.010 is when I got here at Home Depot in 2018, 0:12:22.010 --> 0:12:24.050 I wasn't even really a big believer in what you 0:12:24.070 --> 0:12:29.280 would call the organized retail crime problem. Also pre-COVID, also 0:12:29.340 --> 0:12:32.440 before Omni really took off and has blown up to 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.920 what it is here. Places where you can resell very impersonally. 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:36.839 Wait, what's Omni? 0:12:37.100 --> 0:12:37.440 Online. 0:12:37.580 --> 0:12:38.140 Online sales. 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:38.400 Sorry. 0:12:38.580 --> 0:12:39.459 Omni Channel. Sorry. 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:43.100 But when you think about the kinetics of all that 0:12:43.140 --> 0:12:46.110 and how that's changed over time, and I would tell 0:12:46.170 --> 0:12:49.390 you that I have become a believer in one, organized 0:12:49.429 --> 0:12:50.790 retail crime exists. 0:12:51.470 --> 0:12:54.970 It's become more lucrative. It's become more pervasive. And it's 0:12:55.010 --> 0:12:55.910 become more dangerous. 0:12:56.150 --> 0:12:58.310 When it comes to how it impacts the customers and 0:12:58.330 --> 0:13:02.160 the associates in the stores. So while those numbers have 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.520 generally estimated stayed in the kind of same buckets, I 0:13:05.540 --> 0:13:08.400 believe they're starting to drift up. And I also believe 0:13:08.860 --> 0:13:11.770 since COVID, they've been underreported. And so I think that 0:13:11.790 --> 0:13:14.130 there's a big piece of that, that it's just not 0:13:14.510 --> 0:13:17.710 necessarily reflecting in all the numbers that you see showing 0:13:17.790 --> 0:13:21.250 up in police reporting, FBI uniform crime reports, things of 0:13:21.290 --> 0:13:21.720 that nature. 0:13:37.630 --> 0:13:40.589 So maybe this is a good opportunity to sort of 0:13:40.730 --> 0:13:44.880 dive into some details. But you said earlier in the 0:13:45.140 --> 0:13:49.560 episode that you're more interested in the sort of more sophisticated, 0:13:49.740 --> 0:13:54.439 organized drivers of shrink than perhaps a random person who 0:13:54.620 --> 0:13:58.010 maybe they can't afford an item, etc. Can you talk 0:13:58.030 --> 0:14:03.190 to us about in a given theft, etc., someone goes 0:14:03.250 --> 0:14:05.890 into a store and they walk out or they take 0:14:05.910 --> 0:14:08.990 something that they didn't pay for. What are the fingerprints 0:14:09.140 --> 0:14:11.949 that look like, okay, this we have reason to believe 0:14:11.990 --> 0:14:16.790 was part of something sophisticated and organized versus this is like, yeah, 0:14:16.830 --> 0:14:19.460 we don't support that, but it's one random person and 0:14:19.500 --> 0:14:21.420 it's not going to be the main thing we prioritize. 0:14:21.820 --> 0:14:23.820 Yeah, you guys asked some great questions to get right 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.860 into the details of how some of this becomes difficult. 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.180 So in an individual instance, it's almost impossible. 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:34.450 If you talk to somebody, if we have people in 0:14:34.490 --> 0:14:36.730 our stores, their whole job is to stop theft. That's 0:14:36.790 --> 0:14:39.450 what they do, that they detain people, they prosecute, they 0:14:39.790 --> 0:14:42.000 work with the law enforcement, and they deal with that. 0:14:42.580 --> 0:14:44.480 And then we have groups of people here in Atlanta 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.800 whose job is to handle the more sophisticated components of this. 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:48.330 Piece of it. 0:14:48.780 --> 0:14:51.420 But it all starts locally. It all starts in the stores. 0:14:51.500 --> 0:14:54.110 And so some of that is, hey, I see somebody 0:14:54.170 --> 0:14:57.270 steal that drill. And you sit down and have a 0:14:57.310 --> 0:15:00.370 conversation with that person before they end up going to jail. 0:15:00.990 --> 0:15:02.490 And they were really using it to work on a 0:15:02.530 --> 0:15:03.960 project on their deck on their house. 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:06.120 Whereas you might have. 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:07.940 That conversation with them and say, yeah, I was asked 0:15:07.980 --> 0:15:09.440 to come in and steal this and I was going 0:15:09.460 --> 0:15:11.640 to go take it to another place. And I was 0:15:11.660 --> 0:15:13.090 going to get money for that or I was going 0:15:13.110 --> 0:15:14.530 to get drugs for that or I was going to 0:15:14.550 --> 0:15:16.130 get something and I was going to get given a 0:15:16.190 --> 0:15:18.190 list to go to another store and go get something else. 0:15:18.730 --> 0:15:21.920 And so we cultivate that intelligence. We cultivate those resources 0:15:22.060 --> 0:15:24.600 and report that back to our folks here. who are 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.260 organized retail crime experts and do this for a living, 0:15:27.340 --> 0:15:30.700 most of whom are former federal law enforcement agents or 0:15:30.860 --> 0:15:33.480 law enforcement agents at state and local agencies. And their 0:15:33.540 --> 0:15:35.630 job is to figure out which is the wheat and 0:15:35.650 --> 0:15:37.170 which is the chaff and what are the things that 0:15:37.190 --> 0:15:38.910 are the most important thing for us to go. So 0:15:39.330 --> 0:15:41.650 we have video analytics, we have other technologies that we 0:15:41.690 --> 0:15:44.250 work on to kind of say, okay, Now, I know 0:15:44.290 --> 0:15:44.950 this person. 0:15:45.010 --> 0:15:46.790 I know this car. I know this vehicle. 0:15:46.850 --> 0:15:48.650 I've seen them in store A. Now, I've seen them 0:15:48.700 --> 0:15:51.280 in store B. We've got a report from that building 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:56.260 that says Johnny with driver's license 123456 has been in 0:15:56.300 --> 0:15:59.280 now four stores apprehended for theft because... they're going to 0:15:59.300 --> 0:16:01.450 get apprehended. They might be put in jail and they'll 0:16:01.470 --> 0:16:03.110 be out the next day. You know, they're going to 0:16:03.310 --> 0:16:05.030 make bail or there's going to be no cash bail 0:16:05.050 --> 0:16:06.550 or whatever the case may be. And they're just going 0:16:06.570 --> 0:16:08.090 to go back to doing what they're doing. And so 0:16:08.450 --> 0:16:11.270 that's how we try to like stitch these cases together 0:16:11.290 --> 0:16:13.390 and understand which ones are the ones that are more 0:16:13.910 --> 0:16:16.780 valuable to pull on versus the ones that are like, 0:16:17.060 --> 0:16:18.880 this is really a one-time occurrence and this is not 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:20.550 something that we need to spend a lot of resources on. 0:16:20.700 --> 0:16:23.020 To what degree do you actually work with the police? 0:16:23.140 --> 0:16:26.100 Because when you talk about, well, we observe these people 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:29.010 going to different stores and we try to see if 0:16:29.030 --> 0:16:33.830 we can identify patterns and stitch the sort of ring together. 0:16:33.850 --> 0:16:36.030 That sounds like something the police should be doing. 0:16:36.590 --> 0:16:38.320 Sometimes it's hard enough to get the police to show up. 0:16:38.470 --> 0:16:40.650 And I'm not blaming in this case. I mean, we 0:16:40.700 --> 0:16:44.140 know that police departments are under-resourced, stretched very thin. When 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:49.820 you talk about retail theft versus robbery versus carjacking versus 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:52.780 murder and the escalation hierarchy, where are they going to 0:16:52.820 --> 0:16:54.900 spend their time right so they're they're not going to 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:57.560 always be able to have the capability to come to 0:16:57.600 --> 0:16:59.739 our store and deal with this so i would tell 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:02.370 you our i'll call it our internal behind the scenes 0:17:02.420 --> 0:17:04.210 as we our job is to do the work for 0:17:04.250 --> 0:17:06.790 them our job is to hand them a case file 0:17:06.830 --> 0:17:10.450 that is 80 complete that says i've given you everything 0:17:10.470 --> 0:17:12.510 that i can possibly do for you to then walk 0:17:12.570 --> 0:17:15.410 into a judge get a search warrant get an arrest 0:17:15.470 --> 0:17:18.750 warrant do everything that i can't do and i they're 0:17:18.770 --> 0:17:20.929 going to respect that. They're going to say, if I 0:17:20.950 --> 0:17:22.340 don't have to do all the hard work, I don't 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.740 have to do all the behind-the-scenes labor, and all I've 0:17:24.780 --> 0:17:26.080 got to do is walk in front of a judge 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.560 and say, this is a great case, and we believe 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:30.480 everything that's here, and put their hand up and swear 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.680 on the Bible, then they're going to take those cases 0:17:34.030 --> 0:17:37.470 much more regularly than somebody that's kind of saying, hey, 0:17:37.810 --> 0:17:38.929 you just go figure it out for me. 0:17:39.210 --> 0:17:41.610 Just one more question on this. Is it true that 0:17:41.770 --> 0:17:48.149 some retailers... will not stop shoplifting until they observe the 0:17:48.190 --> 0:17:52.590 shoplifter getting to a certain threshold of goods stolen, because 0:17:52.630 --> 0:17:55.310 then they can go for like an actual meaningful charge. 0:17:55.590 --> 0:17:57.770 You know, I would be hard pressed to speak to 0:17:57.810 --> 0:18:01.399 that for what the policies of some of my compatriots 0:18:01.460 --> 0:18:03.399 are there. But what I would say is, is we 0:18:03.420 --> 0:18:06.240 don't do that. When people say that, I feel like 0:18:06.340 --> 0:18:09.439 they're kind of looking at things in a very narrow scope. 0:18:09.980 --> 0:18:12.550 And going back to our point earlier, this may be 0:18:12.609 --> 0:18:16.190 something where we're already working on this person. We know 0:18:16.230 --> 0:18:19.369 they've been in 50 stores over the last 30 days 0:18:19.430 --> 0:18:21.869 stealing from us. And if they walk out the door, 0:18:21.890 --> 0:18:23.860 it may be because we're going to go watch them 0:18:23.890 --> 0:18:25.580 go to where the fence is or where they're going 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:27.960 to resell the product or where they're storing the product. 0:18:28.300 --> 0:18:30.680 That might be part of an operation versus a, hey, 0:18:30.700 --> 0:18:33.260 we're letting you go get to a threshold. And that's 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:35.290