LPRC - CrimeScience – COVID-19 Series: Episode 12 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, and Tom Meehan

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

In this LPRC CrimeScience COVID-19 Series episode, Read Hayes, Tom Meehan, and Tony D’onofrio discuss LPRC initiatives, mask requirements, contact tracing & privacy, credit card fraud, Australia’s state-based cyber attack, global retail sales data, and the relationship between physical stores & online shopping. The post CrimeScience – COVID-19 Series: Episode 12 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, and Tom Meehan appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of the science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Use Bosch Camera's onboard intelligent video analytics to quickly locate important recorded incidents or events. Bosch's forensic search saves you time and money by searching through hours or days of

video within minutes to find and collect video evidence. Learn more about intelligent video analytics from Bosch in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at BoschSecurity.com. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. special COVID-19 series where we're communicating with our listeners around what's going on nearby and far away and everything in between that we might use to get better and better. We know that there's still a lot of effort out there to slow the spread of the virus in the US locally and nationally, as well as around the world. The same holds true. There's incredible amount of science going on, of course,

around the whole issue, around the virus and its infection rates, but hand hygiene, distance, masking and cleaning still seem to be the big four. You know, we're trying to avoid the spray, trying not to onboard an infectious dose. It's certainly not a large infectious dose and maintain our own health and hydration and so forth so that if we do take onboard a dose,

then we're better able to handle it quickly and get back going. So we know that it's affecting any and everything around the world that we do as humans. And so we want to maintain that. I know, too, that all of us are looking for reliable data. That's tough at any time and very tough now. I think the best advice that we can all get and give is looking at context. Everything we do, we always want to understand context. And it's no different with the COVID-19 infection coming from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And that is, you know, what's the context? How many people are infected? And particularly if there are tests going on and there's more and more testing going on all the time,

what is the actual infection rate of tests? How many are testing positive? We know that some are false positives. We know some are false negatives, type one or two errors. They're occurring. They're occurring, but the context, the rates, hospital admission rates, the ICU within a hospital admission rates, and of course, tragically, fatality rates. But those fatalities that are caused by COVID, the patient died of COVID, not died with COVID. And these things will take, unfortunately, years and even decades to sort out. But as practitioners and trying to get a grasp on how do we do things, do them right,

or at least the best we can. And we know that science is iterative and ongoing. I know it makes it difficult for all of us to understand that. And I heard an interesting concept by the hotel security experts and how they're working with virologists and bacteriologists and others, but looking at the difference between cleaning and then at a higher level sanitizing and then yet the highest level disinfecting through UVC and other techniques that are out there. And I just had the opportunity to fly for the first time in over six months to Charlotte to see my new grandbaby's first birthday, little baby Lily. But it was interesting. The Charlotte airport was absolutely packed with people. Most, who knows, 60, 80% seemed to have their mask on. A percentage of those didn't know how to do

it. It was upside down or didn't cover their nose and so forth. But I think by us maintaining that distance and trying to think outside our own heads, our own skulls, and understand that if we wash our hands, distance ourselves, and try and reduce the spray from our mouths and nose, ourselves and try and reduce the spray from our mouths and nose and then vice versa, you know, we really can keep somebody that's very vulnerable from getting sick or worse. And so that's part of what's happening now. At LPRC, we maintain the landing page for COVID-19 so that any practitioner anywhere in the world can go on there at no charge and look up the latest information from credible sources as science emerges and the practical implications, the translation of that science to practice is there. We continue to do the same with the civil unrest that's led to incredible violence and theft and looting. Now we're seeing some transition to personal attacks

on individuals. The masks do seem to provide, as we all thought, a way to try and anonymize an offender, embolden somebody to launch an attack that might not have otherwise done so in a store, in a parking lot, on the street, in the park, and so forth. So from there, we transitioned to the R3 we're doing here at LPRC, the rapid response research that was designated by the LPRC Innovate Advisory Panel. With masks, again, the updates, we continue to online research projects that will transition to in-store and parking lot with masks where, one, we're looking, of course, at the anonymization and what we can do to train people to understand and look for other traits of a specific person so that we might deter them as well as at least be able to document and identify them later so that maybe we can ultimately reduce offending, victimizing by others that are using those masks. So we're looking at that research, we're conducting that research to look for practical actions and at the same time looking at different mask options that might help do two things. Again, comfort or at least provide some confidence. We know this is all about confidence, getting back into stores, back out

there and interacting, safely interacting with others. And that's going to be that their fear of being infected or passing on infection to a vulnerable person is reduced. So different masks perform differently in that way. So we're looking at that in the confidence, is that retailer and their employee taking their health seriously or not? And so does the type of mask that retail employee is wearing as they interact with them, with the shopper, affect their perception and their likelihood to go back there or allow their loved one to shop in that location. That could be critical to a retailer now and who knows for how long or when it happens again. At the same time, we're trying to see what mask type might reduce intimidation of others because it is different to deal with a set of eyes without the nose and mouth

and this goes through the evolutionary biology of the brain so looking at those we now are really leveraging some pretty pretty cool technology Matterport and virtual reality looking at signage what it should look like where it should go how often it should change to affect behavior, particularly right now, not just buying behavior, but of course, reducing hazardous behavior. So that's really neat. And the retailer we're working most strongly with that right now is Luxottica Sunglass Hut and looking at ways to, particularly in the smaller locations like that, the interior space is smaller. So what seems to work to message based on the science they're getting on spacing requirements to reduce the likelihood of somebody

onboarding an infectious or even a serious dose. We're working at curbside at the Home Depot now, using a parking lot, looking at options. That's just now getting ready to initiate. And then we've got two other retailers that will be next up where we're looking at different types of retailers and optimal ways, again, to conduct curbside more safely, both from an infection and from a car versus human standpoint to maintain safety as well as looking at efficiency. So stay tuned on those R3 initiatives. Likewise, we now are underway with our producer, Kevin Tran, and one of our contract team members working on options for parking lot surveillance to protect and provide confidence to our customers, employees, and delivery people using the live view.

And so we've got options or versions of the live view. So we're looking at dosing options there. Stay tuned for that. HazardNet, the artificial intelligence program that we're working on with University of Florida engineering and computer science faculty, as well as Malang executives and others, where we're looking at how do we best inference or detect hazardous behavior in places and spaces? And then how will we generate alerts? And then how do we train employees to help deconflict? Maybe it might be securing an area that's been tampered with or likely infected. How might we sanitize or

that area immediately? So we're back in action. And so stay tuned. Myself and two faculty that are engineering and computer science also have a grant opportunity. We got one grant on the hazard net AI. Now we're looking also at leveraging AI and robotics. And so we're getting ready to tie in with one retailer, a major company on that, as well as using the robotics lab here at UF at Smart Machines, and then leveraging LPRC's engagement lab to go and start to trial different robotics types, those that are commercially available, those that are being developed here at University of Florida. And then finally, on Operation SafeCord, another NSF grant we just received, we had our first planning call yesterday. And that's where we're looking at the greater community, what we call Zone 5, and then how it interfaces with 4.

In this case, looking at the city of Gainesville and the University of Florida. Here you've got two somewhat separate entities that are physically and geographically co-located, clearly. co-located clearly, but how do you fuse good information from traffic information to license plate reader data, camera data, audio data, data from apps that people opt into and otherwise, so that you can create much more efficient but much safer areas, particularly areas if we can look at females first, if we can keep her safe and feeling safe, that's the highest bar. And so if we can achieve that in a greater way. So stay tuned on Operation Safe Court. So in that case, again, all this is about micro moments and helping shape perception and behavior in that way.

And a lot of different stimulus options that we've got. Impact coming up that first week in October. We're very excited right now. It's going to be all virtual. The normal 12 sessions that we have at any impact conference

for main stage eight learning lab breakouts. That content's already identified, data collected, as I've mentioned before. Heavy planning, getting ready to start record, working on platform options and optimizing that, working with others that are doing online and virtual lessons learned. Kevin's working on the technical side. Kenna Carlson, our research team leader on the content, leading that effort. Jesse on the logistics side. And so stay tuned on Impact, but it's now, registration is now live. Anyone, anyone can participate in Impact 2020 that first week in October. Go to lpresearch.org. You'll not only see the COVID and the riot and looting landing pages, but you'll see,

of course, 2020 Impact and how to get involved in that. We're planning, as of right now, an in-person experience for the strategy at component. And that's for the number ones and twos in the APLP pyramid. We don't think we can provide an in-person experience for impact. The door's not slammed. We're seeing if there's a way for those that are really excited to just interact with other humans to come into impact. I've gotten a lot of feedback.

People are really were excited to come into Gainesville and interact. But, you know, we've got to go with what the CDC and, of course, what UF says around that. And so we're planning for all virtual now, but stay tuned on that. Working groups, full speed ahead. All seven working groups have very busy agendas. So with no further ado, let me go over to my colleague, Tom Meehan, and we'll go from there. Thanks, Reid. Thanks for the recap. I want to talk a little bit and try not to be repetitive, but I know Reid mentioned some of these things. I want to talk a little bit about the civil unrest and some of the numbers that are now coming out. And I would say that a lot of this is very, very early information. Some of it is early as reported yesterday, so I'm sure it will change.

But we'll start with Minnesota, who actually changed their testing guidelines after the protest. Pre-protest, they would only test people that were symptomatic. And as everybody probably is aware, every state and even in-state municipalities have different guidelines of their testing protocols. So Minnesota did do testing after the protests. Basically, I would take this information for what it's worth in the sense that it is still relatively new. But the testing criteria changed post-protests in Minnesota, which are basically allowed to test anybody. They tested 8,500 folks that attended mass gatherings., less than 1% tested positive, just shy of 1%. And I think it's important to note that although that is factual information, we don't have specific numbers on total numbers of protesters, total numbers of people in the area, law enforcement, and so on and so forth. But it is an indication that the states are responding to that. and so forth. But it is an indication that the states are responding to that. Another important note is that the vast majority of demonstrators that were there were wearing masks. Actually,

the state health department handed out over 50,000 masks to community organizers and during these protests. So before the protests turned into the more violent or riot situations, the municipalities did a very good job of trying to hand out masks and educating people on the importance of it. Somewhat of an interesting theory of, you know, thinking about giving protesters masks, you know, is a different kind of school of thought than what we would have done years ago, if everybody recalls during the Ferguson riots, most folks would be arrested if they had a mask. Most municipalities pre-COVID had no mask rules during gatherings for safety reasons. So this changes the concept. I think more information will become available, but it's interesting to take those numbers and really look. As of last week, there were 20 states that had particularly alarming climbing numbers, 11 with extremely high numbers around the Sun Belt and the West. So still a lot of information out there.

There's a lot of speculation of why this is occurring, where those states are particularly high numbers in Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Oregon, Texas. They reported the largest one-day peaks in the whole entire ordeal. So I think it's very important to watch that as we open states. I think California, Los Angeles, at least in California, had an optional mask, and then they went to a mandated mask last week. So some states are kind of retooling as well as Texas. Dallas and Texas, not all of Texas, issued a retail mask requirement as early as last week. So very, very fluid information. I think

it's important for all of us to really keep track of what's occurring. And I think I could be wrong on this. I think you'll see retailers in some areas taking a different stance where masks are optional and trying to influence folks. I know in New York, New Jersey, when I have been traveling that there is a lot of signage of the requirement. It is a requirement. But to Reid's point earlier, I find it interesting how many people wear the masks incorrectly. And sometimes I'm certainly sure that there's a challenge with understanding how the masks work and other times masks are becoming a fashion statement where they're very colorful, they have things on them. And then I've seen people with zipper compartments in the middle so they can drink through them. So as that occurs, it encourages bad mask habits.

And I think that that's one of the challenges. Switching gears, this is going to start to get more light as the news is starting to come up on it. up on it it was heavily reported uh that android and apple both created a contract uh trace feature inside their operating system basically what it was was behind the scenes when you did an update this would um de-identify information to allow municipalities at the center of the decent girl to identify where people were during mass gatherings. This is starting to get some scrutiny under the fact that you now have data being collected. This feature can be turned off. It is opted on by default. And both Apple and Andrew have very, very strict guidelines around what they will do with the information. They both kind of said that they're not going to release this information to law enforcement or for any

other reason except for contract chasing. But if you're someone that's concerned with privacy, you may want to take a look at that settings. It is allowing corporate organizations to track your every movement. And if you're a very, very privacy conscious person and have all of your geolocation services turned off, this is on by default with a recent update. So there were three or four news articles over the weekend talking about the potential of misuse with that information. I'm not suggesting or thinking that that's occurring today, but it is another data point where people are tracking you, as well as it also drains your battery. So if you're a battery guy, it's something to keep in mind. I personally have mine on. I think that I'd want to be notified. I'm very cognizant of other folks. I'm not in a high risk, but I do interact with a lot of people and don't want to get other people sick. We talked a lot about credit card fraud over the last few weeks. And so because

I spoke so much about it, I won't speak too much on it today. But the FTC released a report. They had an additional 63,000 reports of fraud. More than half of them were consumer reports of credit card fraud. So a little bit hard to get exact numbers from the FTC on what that means. They reported a significant uptick in credit card fraud. As we discussed on this podcast and actually on many other conversations, there are retailers that went from having a very, very low penetration of credit card transactions, in some cases less than 20% to 90% overnight. This is obviously a concern and opens up the door for credit card fraud. And we're

now starting to see those numbers. It's important to note that if we really think about it, although coronavirus and COVID feels like it's been months and months, your traditional chargeback process takes about 60 days. So you are now, 90 days days into this are going to now see an influx of chargebacks. And again, it will be overinflated because you have retailers which are client sales and sales on a different channel. So it's something to certainly keep an eye on. And I would urge the listeners to look at your risk portfolio related to credit card fraud and make sure that your rules and your stopgaps are set to deal with this influx. As stores open, your online channel

will probably still be pretty strong. Another really interesting thing in the news, and I think this is some of the things with the civil unrest, the election, and COVID gets a little bit lost in some of the headlines, But Australia has had the largest state-sponsored cyber attack in history. This is really important because this means that there is another nation-state actor attacking. And Australia has taken a very interesting position on this where they're not willing to really discuss the details. When these state sponsored attacks happen, relatively quickly, you can identify where they're coming from. There's been a ton of speculation, whether it be China, North Korea, Iran, there are only really

four or five countries that have the capability to really do a good, a really sophisticated state-based cyber attack. But it's important that while we are dealing with all of these other things that are occurring globally, we become vulnerable to some of these types of attacks because we cannot focus on everything. It is just a reality and what occurs. And Australia did have a different kind of take on COVID, but this is a very, very alarming statistic that's out there. There are two other unconfirmed or unsubstantiated reports. One is related to India. The other is related to Singapore that have similar but not as large. This is a total state-based attack that attacked all of Australia's infrastructure. And the report,

the early reporting indicated that it was every system from utility to government to military. The later reports actually said it was a much broader attack than anything related to the government was attacked. There hasn't been real clear information of what that attack has yielded, what occurred. But again, it's just a reminder that the world is still spinning and there are still the same type of things that go on. And if we are not focused on protecting ourselves, we are at risk. Furthermore, Amazon actually reported the largest denial of service attack in history. They were able to forward it off and fight it. But again, this just goes to

remind folks that as we're dealing with all of the craziness and the things that are going on, cyber criminals and criminals in general are taking advantage. And if you think of things like the largest, when you hear the largest state-based attack in history, the largest denial of service attack in history. This is concerning because Amazon, obviously, and we would think theoretically, has some of the best protection in the globe, and they were able to afford off this attack. What if it affected a more, I don't know, a global retailer or even a US-based retailer that's mid-sized that doesn't have the protection methodology that Amazon has. And state-sponsored attacks do not need to be on nations. They can be and are often corporate-driven. So whether it's to steal intellectual property, to cause disruption for financial impact.

These things occur to both the public and private sector. And arguably, they occur to the private sector more than the public sector, because there's more financial gain and less attention to it. So as I say, always stay vigilant. But it's just a stark reminder that all of these things, that while we have all these crazy things going on, the world still has the same things occurring. There are two wars. There's potentially a war around oil. And then there's a third, very smaller issue versus China and India. While all of these things are occurring, we're still in the same world that we were prior. So definitely put a mask on,

but don't forget to make sure that we're still keeping cognizant of the things that occurred pre-COVID or still occurring post-COVID. And that goes the same with the civil unrest. It's important to stay on top of those things. Over to Tony. Thank you very much, Tom and Reid for the great updates.

And talking to the mask, actually, here in Greenville, South Carolina, the city council this week just made it mandatory that when you walk into a supermarket, you must wear a mask. It's still top of mind in many, many communities. As I know, we have multiple members in the LPRC that are global. Today, I'm going to share a little bit of data in terms of how retail sales are doing in key countries around the world. I'll start in Europe. Germany's sales were down 6.5%, but that's actually an improvement on the forecast of them being down nearly 15%. France's retail sales were down 31% in April versus the previous year. UK retail sales were down 31% in April versus the previous year.

UK retail sales were down 8.9%. What's interesting about the UK, they are probably one of the highest online penetration in terms of online sales. Nearly 31% of retail sales in the UK are online. Italy retail sales were down 26% through April. Spain's were down nearly 32% through April. China, again, is showing that the recovery is starting. Their sales were just down 2.8% in May, and that's an improvement from April when they were down 7.5%. Japan was down 11.5% in April. South Korea, it turned the corner. They actually got COVID-19 under control and their retail sales were actually up 3.9%. Brazil was down nearly 17%. Colombia down 43% year to date.

That's the most shocking number. The latest forecast from IHL in terms of what the U.S. will do this year is that U.S. retail sales will be down 7.6%. And this is a very recent forecast just from June 18th. Interesting to me this week that we are starting to feel more comfortable or we have a some more of a greater sense of safety of going

back to normal. So Statista reported that 41% felt comfortable going out to eat and that's up from 18% just six weeks ago. Going on vacation, we're nearing 40% already, and that was about less than 20% six weeks ago, and that same percentage actually applies to malls. So we're 40% more likely to go to malls. Going to the movies, though, it's still very low, movies, though, it's still very low, 23%. And going outside the country, that was the lowest, it's 12%. Mask usage, it's interesting, it is improving, but not as much as I would have thought in some of the key countries that have been hard hit. So in April in China, 81% were all the people wearing masks. That dropped to 78% in May. For the U.S., it was 39% in April. It was 66% in May. For Germany, it was 16% in April and 52% in May. And the shock was the U.K.

It was 13% in April, only 20% in May, and they're one of the hardest hit European countries. Where are the cases actually growing the fastest right now in terms of countries? The top five are Brazil, Russia, India, Peru, and Chile. Going back to some of the comments that we made about curbside, I actually was on a webinar with a Harvard retail consortium yesterday, and curbside is getting a lot of attention. But one of the major retailers that actually was speaking, saying that it was very successful during the pandemic and and 59% of consumers plan on like it and wanted to continue post the pandemic. Online retail sales grew 50% at the peak. And then I'll close with why some great data as to why I think even though we're all going online and doing stuff online, stores are really going to continue to be a very critical part of the retail formula.

Opening a physical store increases the traffic of a company's website by 27%. Digitally native brands are planning to open nearly 1,000 stores by 2023. So in other words, all these companies that only have online presence for retail, they're all trying to open retail stores. And that's true with Amazon and actually for a lot of the other online brands. 55% of online shoppers prefer to buy from a retailer that has a physical store presence. Trying items in a physical store is 3x more influential than other purchase factors. And 40% of shoppers use retail therapy

as a way to calm down. So 40% of us need to go to the store to just get some therapy and calm down, which was interesting. And finally, just in closing, there's a new blog that just came out this week that actually has the latest economic and retail forecast, which I'll make available also to the COVID-19 PRC site. So with that, over to Reed. All right. Thank you very much, Tony. Thank you very much, Tom and Kevin Tran, our producer.

So to everybody out there, you know, avoid the spray and help others stay healthy. It's, it's the best we can do and it's what we need to do. But please, any questions, comments, and of course, suggestions about how we might shape and better shape Crime Science, the podcast, to enable you and your teams to get better and better, we're here for you. Always operations at lpresearch.org. And the website, again, is at lpresearch.org. So from Gainesville, and again, thanks to my colleagues and everybody stay safe. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented

by the Laws Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more Crime Science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the LF's Prevention Research Council.