Prolific Theft has Become a Critical Mass of Crime

Out-of-Control Theft has Become a Crime Wave with Deadly Consequences. Let’s Stop it Before it Gets Worse.

Jul 30, 2023

a black and white photo of a tree — Photo by Salah Ait Mokhtar on Unsplash

Who hasn’t seen the shocking videos out of Portland, San Francisco, New York and Chicago of mass shoplifting? Recently I saw a video of a thief patiently breaking into packages while being watched by a uniformed security guard, even lighting the packaging on fire to defeat a security case. The CBS affiliate in Chicago reports: “Of 10 recent thefts - some of them violent - that we've tracked in the city's prime shopping districts, there have only been two people arrested. Both of them were minors, and because of that, they are only represented with generic silhouettes rather than mug shots in police news releases about charges.”

Organized Shoplifting is Mass Lawlessness

We hear the tales of store closures across the country, which is exceptional because news is frequently siloed locally, yet it is broadly reported that the flagship Whole Foods Market closed in San Francisco after being open only one year. Walgreens can’t shutter their stores quickly enough to get out of these losing markets. Wal-Mart is pulling their lone store out of Portland, Oregon. Rite-Aid can’t afford to do business in NYC anymore. Retail theft has nearly doubled since 2018 according to the National Retail Federation, to the tune of $94 billion dollars of loss per year. Target alone claimed nearly a half a billion annual loss due to criminal theft.

It All Starts in Property

Even in small police agencies, there is a hierarchy in the investigations bureau. In any department with the size to offer specializations for their detectives, you begin solving stolen toasters before you are assigned a complex high-profile no-leads disappearance mammoth case. A wise lieutenant, while serving as property crimes commander, correctly stated that “it all starts in property.” During my time in investigations, an analytical product describing the cost-benefit of investigations concluded that it was less expensive to purchase each victim a new lawn mower or bicycle, than assign a detective to the case. Fortunately, commanders with sufficient wisdom understood and made the case that recognizes the necessity of holding criminals accountable.

Nothing tells an agency where crime and disorder exist, and where it is predicted to travel, as reliably as data analysis on property crime.

The data and maps for property crimes are the essential tools for deployment of resources, strategies for addressing trends and providing citizens with notification of criminals in their area. These heat maps also put officers in the right areas where other crimes, especially violent crimes are rising, though not as statistically significant as property crime.

Any assertion that property crime is unrelated to violent crime is being disproven with a frequency correlated to the rise in property crime.

man standing on road infront of high-rise buildi — Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Crime and the Fear of Crime

Nicole Gelinas writes from personal experience her City Journal article ‘A Death at CVS’:

“It’s a good idea, as a customer, to give shoplifters a wide berth. They tend toward paranoia, even if you have no intention of attempting to make a citizen’s arrest or calling 911. They’ll snarl or mutter at perceived witnesses nearby. You may have to wait a few minutes in their presence while the clerk unlocks some item that you want to buy.”

As circumstances continued to degrade in her midtown Manhattan neighborhood, the stabbing death of a shoplifter only surprised her as to which nearby store it happened in.

While criminals are to blame for crime, any idea that these circumstances are divorced from terrible public policy is wholly erroneous. No cash bail in NYC is clearly a causation and statements from Alvin Bragg, the criminally negligent district attorney in Manhattan, wrote in his ‘day one’ memo that:

“The memo instructs ADAs to make a common-sense difference between two very different types of cases: a person holding a knife to someone’s neck, and someone who, usually struggling with substance use or mental health issues, shoplifts and makes a minimal threat to a store employee while leaving.”

By making the memo ambiguous, Bragg also makes it very clear that if an assistant district attorney chooses to prosecute a shoplifting, including one threatening or using force, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to prove it to him, the elected district attorney.

Steven Malanga writes: “In truth, America’s exploding shoplifting problem predates our current economic difficulties. Much of the stealing, store owners and security experts say, has less to do with putting food on the table than with a rise in organized theft, and it’s having a particularly adverse effect in cities where criminal-justice reforms have made it easy to get away with.”

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Organized Crime with International Ties

Customs and Border Protection share a success story, but it is undetermined precisely how successful they are or have been.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in the Baltimore Field Office intercepted 239 stolen vehicles during fiscal year 2022 (Oct.1, 2021 – Sept. 30, 2022), taking top spot among all CBP field offices. The vehicles were valued at nearly $11.5 million.”

The Baltimore port is noted for being the highest volume port for passenger cars and trucks as cargo, but that is mostly referring to imports entering the United States via massive 4000 vehicle capacity sea freighters. CBP is finding stolen vehicles in shipping containers where 95% of them are being exported to the West African nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. A high-end Bethesda, MD, dealer lost four showroom cars worth close to $500,000 that were recovered in shipping containers destined for Africa. In a news video, a stolen 2022 Cadillac Escalade is being moved with a forklift after recovery as there were no keys present. The CBP official interviewed admits that they can only investigate a container with suspicion where an x-ray of the container deviates substantially from the shipping manifest – and admits that a lot are making their way through.

Surveillance video of the dealer thefts mirror scenes from the film ‘Gone in Sixty Seconds’ and the recovery in foreign bound containers copy the plot. Not all the vehicles found and recovered were taken as peacefully as a dealership burglary. Victims of violent carjackings also find their vehicles recovered at the port.

It’s Time to Practice Traditional Crimefighting

Unlike the scale of the go-go Eighties where ports were overwhelmed by incoming containers of cocaine shipments, these export containers include multiple levers for enforcement and compliance. Likewise, solutions abound for communities dealing with conditions where citizens fear crime and their essential stores are occupied (and being shut down) by people with untreated behavioral health issues and criminals trafficking what they steal.

Frequently passed off as a personnel and staffing issue, failure from a policy perspective will ensure that coordinated international criminal cartels grow more powerful and organized while American citizens are increasingly and violently victimized. Let’s stand up to this before it gets any worse.

As always, please keep our peace officers in your prayers.

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