As if surviving the pandemic wasn’t enough, Canadian business owners now face an alarming resurgence of retail crime. And with incidents growing in volume and severity, the lack of a smarter, more connected response could push many off their path to recovery.
The stats are enough to make any retailer sweat. In Canada, it is estimated that organized retail crime costs business owners upwards of $4.6B per year. More alarming still is that organizations like the Retail Council of Canada are reporting an upsurge in violent store activity.
Retail crime is reaching alarming levels across many countries, confirms Tom Batterbury, Co-founder and CO-CEO of Auror, a New Zealand-based crime intelligence platform provider. In the last 12 months alone, we’ve seen serious incidents where people have displayed violent and aggressive behaviour double for retailers.
No doubt, rising pandemic tensions and economic hardships have led to more headlines of retail crime. All told, adds Batterbury, The public would be shocked if they understood the extent of retail crime in the community and how organized it is in nature.
Narrowing in on the main culprits
The shape of retail crime is changing, and not for the better. Today’s thieves are bolder and more organized, with top offenders stealing thousands of dollars in products from any number of stores and supporting black market activities with every sale.
As Batterbury warns, There’s a misconception that retail crime is mostly about kids stealing chocolate bars or people stealing out of desperation. However, the majority of the theft is driven by people stealing as their source of income and is often connected to organized crime. We’re talking about people walking out with cart-loads of specific products and selling them through online market places or to other receivers that then resell them as legitimate products.
The top offenders may be fewer in number, but it’s these more active offenders connected to highly organized retail crime groups that are causing the most damage. Auror’s research finds that a mere 10% of people are driving 60% of the reported loss.
In many cases, it’s a small amount of thieves doing the most amount of damage, says Batterbury.
The challenge with catching them, he adds, is that these offenders are often unknown by the retailers when being reported to the police or they won’t be reported at all. If the same unknown individual is getting reported by multiple retailers, no one is making the connection that they are the same individual.
Then, that same thief goes on to steal from 30 other stores in the community, resulting in 30 more unknown person reports that are seemingly unconnected. And with little information or details to go on, this makes it difficult for police to see those connections and do something about it, says Batterbury.
Understanding this, there is a critical need to give retailers and law enforcement agencies new tools to connect and trace their activities in order to stop these 10-percenters in their tracks.
Connecting the dots
Crime intelligence is central to theft prevention. And in the retail sector, that defines the ability to recognize and track main offenders from one incident or store to the next.
Batterbury and his team are tackling the issue with Auror. Launched in New Zealand, and recently introduced to Canada, Auror is a crime intelligence platform in which intelligence and evidence from retail crimes can be uploaded and shared between retailers and their law enforcement partners on a single platform.
We’ve set about digitizing the relationship between the retail community and law enforcement to make it simpler, faster, and more collaborative to reduce retail crime. That way, there’s a better chance they’ll finally face consequences that are equal to the totality of their offences, Batterbury explains.
It’s a modern response to a complex issue. By having the digital tools to share pictures, videos, and other evidence on a shared and secure platform, retailers and police alike can begin equipping themselves with the real-time intelligence they need to take action.
The idea is to give retailers a way to start recognizing who these people are so that the next time they come back, you can start giving them focused attention through customer service and let them realize that they’re being noticed, says Batterbury.
No doubt, thieves thrive in anonymity. And yet, Auror’s research indicates that once these repeat people start getting identified at stores and dissuaded from stealing, 45% of them don’t come back to re-offend within six months.
What happens is they start to learn that, ‘Hey, I’m not going to go back to that store because while I thought I was getting away with it, obviously I’m not any more, says Batterbury.
Overall, he adds, the goal of Auror is to give retailers and law enforcement partners the tools to collect and share data in a faster, more streamlined and secure way: When we use computing power to streamline the submission of evidence and connect more dots, then we help police build and solve their investigations much faster. That goes a long way towards sustainably reducing crime and harm in our communities in the long-term.
Putting thieves in the spotlight
Good things happen when retail thieves are exposed. In addition to dissuading repeat attempts and facilitating arrests, the intelligence collected by Auror can be useful in combatting other crimes within the community, be it drug dealing, car thefts, violence, and other illicit activities that may involve the same bad actors.
What we’re finding is a more effective way of policing is to focus on the totality of offending, notes Batterbury. Take John Doe, for example. John Doe might think he got away with 20 things over the last month, but all of a sudden there’s a policeman at his door with evidence of all 20 of his crimes, and now he knows he’s not getting away with anything.
Moreover, the ability to collect and share that amalgamated evidence also gives judges the information they need to give more effective sentences that reflect the totality of their crime.
There’s the bigger picture to consider as well. With the ability to connect the dots between incidents, police can start identifying patterns. Private surveillance teams can also begin tracking where recurring criminals are going to sell their goods, and begin chipping away at larger criminal networks doing even greater community harm.
Making an impact
Fuzzy camera feeds and anecdotal evidence won’t cut it any more against modern thieves. Promisingly, adopters of Auror’s crime intelligence solutions are making a difference.
We’re seeing some big wins come from our partnership with retailers and law enforcement agencies, both here in New Zealand and in North America, reports Batterbury, adding, Our retail and law enforcement partners are recovering millions of dollars of product and millions in drugs and cash from the same sources.
Today, 20% of all crime reported to New Zealand Police are reported from retailers via the Auror platform. The ability to access uploaded evidence (e.g., video, descriptions, images) in a streamlined way through Auror has also reduced the amount of time it takes to file a criminal report by nearly two hours, saving an estimated 200,000 hours a year for police agencies.
The Auror platform is also putting North America’s retail criminals in the spotlight. At last count, Auror is being used in around 30 Canadian law enforcement agencies and over 500 in the United States, who are partnering with a number of retailers in each market.
Looking ahead, the Auror team is hoping to expand the platform’s reach in North America by enabling law enforcement to sign up and use the platform for free.
All they need to do is sign a QR card, and once we verify they are police, they can access the platform and start taking full advantage, adds Batterbury.
Learn more about Auror, and how to sign to begin using it for free in partnership with Canadian retailers. Visit www.auror.co/join/rexall.
