According to Wikipedia, organized retail crime indicates professional shoplifting, retail crime rings and other organized crime happening in the retail industry. Organized crime refers to professional thieves that are not taking a pack of gum only, but that consistently visit stores and shoplift hundreds of dollars every time. The FBI has estimated that the retail industry loses an approximate $30 billion a year due to organized retail crime. Retailers in South Dakota alone estimate that they loose and approximate $95 million a year due to organized shoplifting crime, depriving the state of the sales tax revenue they would otherwise collect and hurting the local economy.
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Twelve Reasons Why We Need to Focus on the Fundamentals in 2014
Reflecting back on my humble beginnings in loss prevention, I can still remember the first lesson that I ever learned; a message fundamental to everything that followed. While it may have been shared in different ways or with different words, it was the same message that all of us have heard, still echoed today in companies across the country. In fact, they’re words that most of us have repeated – many times over. But they weren’t words of shrink, or partnerships, or Five Steps. That came with time, and was built upon with experience. The words were more primal, yet far more important. Do you remember?
“There’s nothing in the store that’s worth the risk of anyone getting hurt.”
2013 gave us far too many examples showing just how quickly that message can be lost.
Clearly, the shoplifter is making a bad decision when they make a conscious effort to steal from the store. Those actions have consequences, occasionally much more severe than might be anticipated. But sometimes the cost is much too high. People can get hurt, and lives can change forever. In some cases, lives are lost.
1. January 04, 2013: Shoplifter Dies After Being Attacked by Other Customers
2. January 24, 2013: Police Shoot, Kill Shoplifter on College Campus
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Retailers support tougher shoplifting law
Legislation to help prosecute organized retail crime in South Dakota will be proposed during the 2014 legislative session, which opens Jan. 14.
“This is an issue we’ve seen exploding around the nation, and it’s starting to reach into South Dakota,” said Shawn Lyons, executive director of the South Dakota Retailers Association, which is working with the state attorney general’s office to craft the legislation.
Existing statutes speak only to prosecuting the occasional shoplifter, Lyons said.
“Organized retail crime is not shoplifting,” he said. “It refers to groups, gangs and sometimes individuals engaged in (taking) retail merchandise through theft and fraud in substantial quantities.”
Panasonic System Communications Company of North America, a leading provider of retail business technology solutions, is today demonstrating the integrated retail solutions at NRF 2014 EXPO (booth #1539). Featuring a wide variety of technology solutions designed to help meet the needs of retailers from the sales floor to the back office, delivery truck and everywhere in between, the Panasonic exhibit space demonstrates how rugged enterprise-grade tablets and wireless solutions can connect the retail environment. This connection enables stores to manage much of their technology portfolio, including surveillance systems, digital signage, point of sale and more from one handheld screen.
“As technologies continue to converge onto one network, 2014 will be the year that retailers truly embrace reliable end-to-end technology solutions that will connect data to customers, employees and managers to create not only a best-in-class customer experience, but also improve overall employee productivity, boost sales and reduce shrinkage,” said Ed McCabe, National Sales Manager, Retail, Panasonic System Communications Company of North America. “This convergence will also enable retailers to manage these technologies from a single device – like our family of fully-rugged Toughpad tablet computers.”
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