LPRC - CrimeScience Episode 38 – The Importance of Retail Collaboration with LE ft. Ryan McCazzio & Daryl Blackmore

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

This episode is a follow up to the Learning Lab from IMPACT 2019. We discuss the importance of retail collaboration with law enforcement with guests Detective Ryan McCazzio (GPD) and Daryl Blackmore (Rexall), and co-hosts Dr. Read Hayes (LPRC) and Tom Meehan (CONTROLTEK). The post CrimeScience Episode 38 – The Importance of Retail Collaboration with LE ft. Ryan McCazzio & Daryl Blackmore 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. Co-host Dr. Reid Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council and Tom Meehan of Control Tech discuss a wide range of topics with industry experts, thought leaders, solution providers, and many more. As a follow-up to our MPact 2019 Learning Lab breakout session, we will go further in-depth about the importance of retail collaboration with law enforcement with our guests, Darrell Blackmore of Rexall and Detective Ryan Macazio of the Gainesville Police Department. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Be a leader in loss prevention by implementing

integrated solutions that enhance safety, reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. Bosch integrated security and communication solutions span Zones 1 through 4 in the LPRC's Zones of Influence, while enriching the customer experience and delivering valuable data to help increase retail profitability. Learn more by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. All right, welcome everybody to another episode of LPRC's Crime Science Broadcasting from the University of Florida's beautiful campus today.

And I wanted to introduce, of course, my cohort, Tom Meehan from Control Tech, longtime retail practitioner and now solution partner. Detective Ryan Macazio, who we work with quite a bit from the Gainesville Police Department. And Ryan is an incredible partner in not only helping solve retail crimes, but helping us think and think differently and hopefully much better about how we might prevent crimes. And then what we're going to be talking about today, work together, collaborate and extend that. what we're going to be talking about today, work together, collaborate, and extend that. And then also, critically, with Daryl Blackmore from Rexall, Canada, one of our LPRC members. And I want to welcome everybody today to LPRC's Crime Science Podcast.

All right, so today's theme is significant and something we've talked a lot about in the past and that's creating a positive ecosystem so that everybody can sell more and lose less that we can collectively figure out ways to get better at reducing suppressing theft fraud and violence but most importantly we want to do that morally we want to do that because our all-important shopper and our store employees associates our team members are so important to us and we want them to feel and be safe and secure so with no further ado what we'd like to do is kind of rehash a little bit rediscuss a little bit one of our learning labs from 2019 LPRC Impact that took place on the UF campus the first week in October 2019. But what happened there was a pretty amazing learning lab breakout where we had some of the experts you're going to hear from

today and we're going to talk with today, where they were, how do we work together? How do we come up with or use existing or evolving platforms to communicate issues, ask questions, talk about crime events, and especially attempts or including attempts? How do we map and take action against these groups individually? How do we deter them, and take action against these groups individually? How do we deter them, but also collectively? So if I might, Tom, if I can go over to you, what's your opening round of questions? What's your discussion with Detective Macazio, with Ryan, as well as with Daryl? Well, thank you, Reed, and thank you both for joining. I mean, my question is probably a simplistic one, but it's to both of you. What do you think is different today than maybe five years ago as far as how we're partnering both within the law enforcement community and the retail community? So in my view, in the past five

years here, the one main thing that we've noticed, I think I spoke to it on the last time I was on this podcast. And once again, thank you for having me. I'm back on. But it's the ability for these ORC groups kind of to go incognito. And when these, because all the sales and stuff are now going on online, and we need the retailers to help us, not only to help us be able to track their goods, but they're the ones that are providing us all the information, you know, what their top targets are, targeted goods are, because they see a lot of the same people over and over again as do we. But the more information we're able to get, the more ability we're able to go and effectively do our job and hopefully recover the property for the retailers. and effectively do our job and hopefully recover the property for the retailers.

So from the retailer side, it's Daryl Blackmore here. And again, thank you for inviting me as well. I think for me on the retail lens, what some of the biggest changes I've seen in the last five years is really around the need to collaborate more with the police. It's not enough now just to submit a report and expect that to be enough to be the catalyst for the police to be able to help us with our problems. that that's a one-off, that these are repeat offenders that are driving, you know, the opioid crisis or, you know, an organized retail crime group that's, you know, shipping goods overseas, whatever the case is. I really think that the onus has come back to retail to really

drive that partnership in some ways. And that's something that I didn't see as much five, 10 years ago. What is the, and again, for both of you, and forgive me for consistently, I'll probably say that a lot. What do you think technology has done to help or hurt some of the collaboration? So technology for me, I think it's mostly helped the collaboration with the systems we looked at, such as Aura, that gives us the ability to have the real-time information available to us, it's going to help us solve crimes more rapidly and more frequently, because we have that information right now, right here. But on the negative aspect of that, like we were saying, as far as people being able to sell the goods and whatever else in an incognito

setting. I think that has kind of hindered us in a way where I think both us as law enforcement retailers have never seen before. But we're always behind the curve when it comes to that as far as technology. Yeah, I really think the technology has been the catalyst to allow us to share this information and effectively partner with law enforcement. But it has some drawbacks as well on that front, even in that we can be, you know, information overload to the police and to the departments and the boots on the ground.

Because we collect so much information, and now we have an avenue to share it, sometimes it can lead to us giving too much, instead of just being able to filter the big pieces that they need and really focus on what those main core issues are. But I think it's been a bigger plus than it has been a detractor, for sure. The technology, I agree with the detective that it has made it easier for organized retail prime to flourish and to drive the products out of our business to have somewhere to go with them versus the old, you know, had to go find your fence, find your shop. They can do it on their own now. So technology is hurt and hindered on both sides. But overall, I think without the

technology, we'd really be fighting a losing battle. And Daryl, I guess this is probably just, and it could be both of you, but being that you're outside the United States, what impact, if any, does it have to do with some of the organized retail crime that crosses the border? So we are starting to see it. I mean, not in a large scope, but recently we actually have had to work with the Secret Service and with the FBI on a large credit card case that, you know, they got wind of through, you know, a police officer sharing it off of our retail platform that we've posted and then jumping on it saying, hey, I think this is the same crew that we're looking at. So we're starting to see that network expand. I actually honestly didn't know that that would be a benefit that we'd see from leveraging this technology is that these police officers who are on the platform and getting this information,

while it might be something that they can't do anything with, are forwarding it off to the contacts that they have to connect with us and drive some of these cases. So there's definitely a connection there. with us and drive some of these cases. So there's definitely a connection there. And specific, and this could go to both of you as well, specific to the learning lab and what happened at Impact, what can you tell us as far as benefits to folks that don't really have a full grasp of the retail crime intelligence platforms that were talked about and some of the data insights that you're given. If there's a listener here listening, what would be some advice from a law enforcement standpoint and from a retail standpoint for our listeners?

So from a law enforcement standpoint, you know, we just rely on the information that the retailers upload into the systems that we've discussed. But let me tell you, it's made my job a lot easier, which I like having an easy job sometimes. But the information like was discussed before, you know, it could be information overload, but it's mostly good information. I'd rather have, as a law enforcement officer, too much info than not enough info. Because with not enough info, there's really not much I can do with the case. With too much info, it gives me opportunities maybe to go to different areas of a case

that I may not have thought of before. And being able to link certain ORC groups and links a lot of these players with these platforms is beyond measurable. So any advice that I would be giving is collaborate with your retailers. Do it as quickly as you can because you'll see your numbers and effective cases go up through the roof. For me, if I think about any retailers that are listening and might not be aware of what a criminal intelligence platform can do for them,

I think one of the biggest wins you get out of investing in this type of technology, whether it's with Aura or with another product that's out there, is that it creates the awareness that I found was generally lacking within our business. It was easy to say we had an organized retail crime problem, but in the past for us, it was very hard to prove that to the rest of the business and to get their buy-in

and their, for lack of a better term, open the purse strings to allow us to leverage some technology. With Aura, that's been the boon for us is the awareness that's created within our own business about how big of a problem organized retail crime is because we can actually quantify it today. We could just say it was a problem yesterday. retail crime is because we can actually quantify it today where we could just say it was a problem yesterday. Now we can actually show them the hard and fast numbers of how many times we're having incidents, how many repeat offenders are driving this problem for us. That is very powerful within the corporate retail setting to get leverage and get buy-in from other parts of your business to help you leverage and move forward on some of your other, you know, initiatives. That's a really interesting point, Daryl, and a huge one, really.

I hadn't really had considered that not only can this, you know, joint effort in particularly using a, you know, a technology platform, the one you're mentioning, R and others that are out there, to bring people together and get them motivated, but to use that internally to help your own leaders and counterparts in the business understand this is pretty significant. I think everybody knows that our orientation here is to think about the green and red shopper. The green shopperper she's not coming there or coming back or he that if you're out of stock um and so that's just one of the the quick

decision points that helps them say you know what i'm out of here or i'll find something but i'm not coming back um and so you're you've got that visibility you've got that intelligence you've got documentation good evidence about hey this is really kind of part or maybe even a large, large part that's explaining some of this loss and can help. Here are things that we can do. Here are things we're trying to do jointly. Huge. So I wanted to ask, do you guys maybe go on to Ryan, Ryan, what's a case study, whether you're using a platform like our or something else, or there's no platform involved where you working jointly with one or more retailers were able to make a difference,

to do something differently, do something better, and take some of the high rate or high impact offenders off the street? What's a good case study, Ryan? So, you know, we have so much here, but one that really comes to mind, and this was actually before the implantation of Aura, but just shows you kind of the collaboration. There was a retailer that was having some issues with a couponing scam. As we know, these couponing scams are frequent, and we weren't sure of what scale that this couponing scam would end up being.

Basically, a shopper was going to a business, cashing out coupon after coupon after coupon at a certain person, a certain register. It was the same employee over and over again. So me being the police, I said, ha, this is interesting. So I was actually just down at this retailer doing some follow-up on a different case. And my suspect happened to come in at the same time my target employee was still working. And I was actually in the LPO office at the time and we just happened to have the, um, regional LP up at the time. Everything just kind of fell into place. Um, so working in this case, we ended up recovering over $20,000 worth of merchandise from a, uh, search warrant I wrote and actually get apprehensions and, um, on both on the employee and on the offender. But it was just so strange that I just happened to be there at the time, but I was literally on a different case and everybody just happened to be in the play. But, you know, $20,000 recovery for any type of

targeting couponing scam is pretty good. That's an excellent example. Um, and it's a way that, yeah, you were able to learn more, do it more rapidly and, um, do it better. Um, what about from your standpoint, Daryl, what's an example, uh, of before not collaborating, uh, collaborating, but maybe even uniquely now you're using your, your platform, uh, your intelligence sharing. Well, I think there's two really good examples I can use, and one of them is currently developing right now. So in Manitoba province up here, we had a very high amount of aggressive retail theft as of late.

And using Aura as a leverage, we had met with the chief of police and shown them the platform and talked about it and what the benefits it could be for some of their officers and that sort of thing. And it's evolved now into today where we'll be attending a retail council meeting that's in partnership with the Justice Department where we'll have

Crown prosecutors there. We're going to have all the different police chiefs for the province there. We're also going to have some of the other retailers represented there. And really, we're talking about the platform and talking about how we can now share the information. And one of the big things is that, similar to the US., privacy laws played a big impact on how much we can share and how easily. And they've engaged the Justice Department to help us with that, and that's part of this meeting that they'll be having, is to come up with a solution to allow us to easily share

that information between retailers without necessarily having to have the police be the middleman, because there is some language that they could they believe they could easily change in in some of their their law in manitoba specifically to allow for that to happen quickly so i think that's where you know you can evolve from it being a criminal intelligence platform we used it as the leverage to get into, have some conversations with law enforcement in this province. But it really has exploded to a much broader scope and with the government and law enforcement both understanding that they need

to be able to enable these partnerships between law enforcement retailers, but also between retailer and retailer. So that's a huge win for us specifically, but as an industry in Canada, I think it will be a bigger impact. And the other side of that is the success that we've just seen with, you know, getting arrests and warranties issued that we hadn't had in the past. And I did a meeting a couple of weeks ago and it was a really staggering stat. So we've had these 200 locations on ORAF since about September 15th of 2019. And in that time, we've had 450 incidents reported to law enforcement. And from that, we've had 22 arrest warrants issued and 13 of those have resulted in their arrests so far, where these people have been

taken off the street. But the real story behind that is that, yes, the collaboration with the police has been a big part, but it's actually been the sharing with the other retailers where we're getting that. Because unlike a lot of retailers, my company doesn't have a strong loss prevention officer forced in the stores. We have it in select stores. So we actually rely on a lot of these arrests being made by the other retailers. And the only way they know that these people are people they should be interested in is us sharing that information now and them having the insights to go, oh, these guys are also wanted for 11 cases against Rexall on top of whatever they had just arrested the person for.

So that's been a huge win for us. Another great example, Daryl. Thanks for that. And let me kind of go to both you all. If you were the leader of the world and you know you've got these issues, you know the connections that have been made, you know the tools, including the platforms. connections that have been made, you know, the tools, including the platforms. But if you could change something, enhance something, add something, what might that look like? Maybe back over you to Detective Macazio.

To you, Ryan. God, if I was living in a world, man, would I change a lot of things. But when it comes to this type of stuff, you know, in order to combat these type of organized retail crime like we were saying before you have to have a common platform everybody has to be on the same page not only law enforcement for all the retailers and if we can get everybody on the same book whether it's the aura platform or something very similar we could slash this ORC issue we have tremendously. Information is what we need, and information is what I would make people get out there to everybody, because I can't tell you time and time again how many different times we

see an offender hitting multiple stores, not just one store, but multiple stores, and then me as a law enforcement officer having to pick up the pieces and maybe missing one in there in order to get the appropriate charges done and also the recovery of the property for the retailers. Interesting. Very interesting. How about you, Daryl? Yeah.

I would echo that completely. I think consolidation is one of the biggest needs. We don't make the job any easier for law enforcement when, you know, we have our own platform as a retailer, they have their own. There's other ones out there that other retailers are using. It does make the job a lot harder to combine the information. Yeah, it does happen. But I think there's probably a better way. And I think that's one of the drivers is getting to a unified platform that all retailers could use, all police could use. But I know that that may not be a reality in

the near future, but that I think would change the game completely for us and for law enforcement. And then tell me, Daryl, from your perspective, what are some of the particulars that you're doing using the platform, things you might be doing differently? And then as part of that, I mean, and how you have been using the platform to kind of go and talk to your colleagues in the business. the lever to allow us to feel comfortable to go have these conversations, that we're coming to the table with something to provide law enforcement as a tool to help not just us, but them consolidate and collect information and to drive change. If I go back to what's going on in Winnipeg, one of the things they've agreed to is that they're going to put every single beat cop on the platform in their major city there, which for us is a huge win because it does show them the times that we have issues. And they actually already said they're going to start changing the scheduling

that they're using for some of these beat patrols because currently it doesn't reflect where we have problems. They said it's an easy win for them to say that, okay, well, looking at your profile of what you've given us, you know, these stores typically experience most of their issues from 2 until 5 p.m., not, you know, well, we're running the beat patrols right now from, you know, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. We're missing the biggest chunk of where you have problems. So it's given us these levers to go and sit down and have conversations with law enforcement that aren't just at the constable and detective level. We're actually getting in front of inspectors or police chiefs,

and then they're coming back and saying, hey, can you actually come in and train our entire department on this and show them all this platform at once? That's something that's never happened in the past for us. And, you know, the amounts of collaboration that creates and it's leading to things that are outside of even our realm of normal working with them coming to us with other things now to say, hey, can you help us with this? I know it's not directly related, but, you know, it will be a good platform for us to give you that information

and then share it with other retailers. So I think the biggest piece, as I said, is for us to be able to leverage something to get us in front of the police instead of just showing up and saying, hey, we need help. Excellent. One thing we're working here, obviously, with GPD, Gainesville Police Department, and, you know, Detective Macazio and his boss and colleagues here, and what we're doing is we're getting ready to expand to more than one retailer and get an idea, how does a retailer leverage it? And you brought up some great points there, Daryl. Number two,

how do you leverage the technology and the communication and the visibility, transparency you start to get between retail companies? And then finally, of course, with law enforcement and create an ecosystem of information so we've got more evidence-based action. But I think, too, as you know, up in Canada, we've had discussions with quite a few retailers and we've got some pretty big retailer players in addition to Rexall Canada up there in the form of TJX and Lowe's and really quite a few others. There's a lot of talk about maybe establishing a beachhead, particularly in Ontario, in the Toronto area, where we could have some test stores and look at things. So not only would we like to expand some of the testing and R&D using crime intelligence platforms here in Gainesville as a case study to do all these things, but maybe up in the Toronto area.

Do you have any thoughts on that, Daryl? Yeah, I think there definitely be the other retailers here. You actually named a few. TJX is probably one of the biggest ones that my investigator works with closely, especially on the larger ORC. They have a very good setup here in Canada. I'd say they're probably one of the best setup here in Canada. And I know they, in the conversations they've had about the platform, they love it and would love to have something like that to leverage. So, yeah, I definitely think there'd be an appetite.

Ontario is the best choice probably because that's where most of our big retail is headquartered as well. So you have access to the right people and it is by and far probably our largest retail crime area as well. All right, fantastic. So we'll probably be in touch shortly. And going over to you, Ryan, what do you see is going to help us do that research? Any thoughts or ideas that you might have, suggestions on bringing together another couple of retailers and maybe even another law enforcement agency into the loop to see what we can do to further leverage this type of platform? So I've actually presented Aura to my command staff already, and they are fully on board with this platform.

Anything to combat this ever-growing ORC problem we're having here in Gainesville, my command staff's on board with. So just being a cop for 15 years now and seeing platforms like these just make the investigation so much easier. I don't think you'll have a problem at all bringing out any other type of law enforcement platform. As far as retailers, I think like Daryl was saying is that once you start showing numbers, recovery numbers, numbers, recovering numbers, once you start showing that the means outweigh, you know, whatever money they put into these type of programs, you know, is shadowed or overwhelmed by the number of recoveries and number of arrests, I don't think you'll have a problem with the retailers going on board.

I understand there's a lot of different types of privacy laws, this, that, and the other. But, you know, in order to be able to combat these types of crimes, we're going to have to kind of get over a lot of these worries that we have. Because we're never going to be able to stop it if we don't collaborate with both retailers and law enforcement. Great feedback. I appreciate that, Ryan. And it's interesting. I mean, I, you know, we know that evidence-based policing, intelligence-led policing are increasingly critical and growing in this, in this type of platform and this type of collective activity plays into it, particularly when it's driven by hard data. Tom, back over to you for any other insights, questions, comments. Yeah, I mean, so I certainly don't want to make this

a commercial about Aura, but I don't know that all the listeners were using that name quite understand. Darrell, from a retailer's perspective, can you explain the platform and how it's helped? And then from the law enforcement standpoint, if Ryanyan could do the same that'd be great yeah absolutely so at its basic essence aura is a database program but where it's different is is that it's it's become the biggest awareness tool for your business once it's in place and i say that because your stores are going to start capturing all this information about offenders, about your repeat offenders. And it's all accessible and all in one place. And it's shared with the staff in the store. I can tell you one

of the biggest wins we've had and we've seen the power of is that because we've seen the stores start identifying these repeat offenders who are hitting you through Aura, the power of that repeat offender walking into one of these retail locations in your, you know, part-time cashier who works eight hours a week, recognizing that individual and then calling them by name and telling them that they're not to be in your store. then calling them by name and telling them that they're not to be in your store. The power of that is huge. And Aura is the lever that gives that information to your staff. Almost every retailer out there has a platform or a database where all your internal incidents and external incidents are captured.

But what I found and what our problem specifically was is that the data wasn't in a format that was usable to our staff or our managers, wasn't accessible. That's the difference with Aura is that it's basically social media for theft for your employees. They can scroll through, they can see what's happened in their store since they last worked. They get to see the pictures of the people who offended. It gives them that information to be able to help stop repeat offenses or, you know, identify as soon as they're in the store to call a manager. I remember in some of these cases where we've gotten warrants issued to actually call the police.

Yeah. So from a law enforcement standpoint with Aura, you know, in my field, you know, as cops, we like the simplistic. We like everything simple. And Aura, the platform of Aura, like was said, it's like the social media. It's like Facebook. It's like a Facebook feed of crime, of ORC type of crime, of just theft type of crime. And what makes it so easy is searchability features of each event that's uploaded so if you're a beat cop and maybe you see a suspicious vehicle and you run the tag on a suspicious vehicle and you now see that this vehicle has been involved

in a theft that just occurred you have that ability to you know maybe develop some more probable cause to get a stop on that vehicle but now you have those that option and another thing I love about it is that the events upload immediately so you could actually be sitting in a parking lot of coals and an event is being uploaded and if the event is being uploaded right then and now you can maybe deter the escalation of violence. You know, maybe you're able to go in there and assist in apprehension. And just the amount of information that it presents and also it kind of acts like an evidence locker.

So for me, when I get a case and I'm building all this evidence and I present it to my state attorney's office to maybe get an arrest warrant on groups of people. Everything's right there, right now, and I can just say, here it is. And believe me, our state attorney loves video, loves pictures, loves information, and it makes our job and it makes their job even easier to prosecute these type of cases. Yeah. How many agencies are you working with, Daryl? I'm sorry, I was going to ask you. I know you're working with two or three or more agencies at this point. Well, so keeping in mind, so we have a little bit of a different law enforcement set up here. We do have a federal law enforcement agency, the RCMP, which has probably been one of the harder to get

on the platforms although we've recently made inroads with them but actual if you look at it by districts police districts we have dozens now but every major city's police force is that we have stores on the platform in is now on the platform as well. But one of the things that I just wanted to quickly add, and it piggybacks off of what Ryan was saying, is that one of the biggest wins we've had with the police is that evidence locker. And it's the ability for an officer to log into to the platform and see if we've done everything before they have to attend the store.

So a perfect example is we file a report, but the employees that witnessed it never wrote up their statements yet. So the police prior to would show up, be discouraged because they made the trip. The evidence that they need to get from the store isn't ready. They have to make another trip back versus with Aura. They simply log into the platform. They look at this evidence blocker and go, hey, guys, I'm missing the statements from the employees. Can you please upload those before I attend the store? So it's been a huge win on helping the police manage that piece. To get off that, like what Daryl said, you know, as law enforcement, you know, our law enforcement numbers, as we notice, have dwindled.

The amount of officers that are on patrol on the road have dwindled, but we can't allow that to lack customer service to respond to calls. So these retail crimes are important to us, but we can't be there all day long just dealing with maybe simple theft. But

with Aura and this platform, like Daryl said, all that information is there. So all the officer has to do is respond, take a quick report, forward it up to me, who now is your ORC investigator. I have more time on my hands to be able to investigate these types of incidents and put them all together. That's what I think is one of the main gems of Aura. Well, and we talk a lot about in the retail environment, low friction,

if we want the shopper to come to our place, spend time and money, and most importantly, or just as importantly, return to our shop, we're reducing friction. And what I'm hearing from both you, Daryl, and of course, you, Detective Macazio, is that that's really been a key point here is the platform not just enables and creates the connections and the transfer of intelligence and knowledge and enabling the support you need, but it's reducing friction and it's making it easier and more convenient for all the users. So there's less pushback, less resistance, there's more cooperation is what I'm taking away right now. Yeah, I would agree with that statement.

Like I said before, I don't foresee in my area in Gainesville any pushback from getting onto the system at all. It's just a matter of being able to get retailers to buy into it. So let me say, is there anything else we need today? We want to talk about law enforcement, retailing cooperation, retailer to retailer cooperation. How do we better enable that so that we have greater effect, particularly on that high rate offender or those crews that are out there striking? How do we develop that transparency? Ryan, from your perspective, anything we're

missing in today's conversation, anything else we need to know, questions or comments, suggestions? So, you know, we talk about this crime intelligence platform, and I understand it costs money. You know, a simple way to kind of get that retailer to retailer or retailer to law enforcement, that direct contact, like we have here in Gainesville, we have a very active ORC, ORCAP, Google emailing group. Something that simple will help us as law enforcement and you all as retailers even start to kind of combat this type of thing. But that can get overwhelming because you don't have the kind of setups and you're going through piles and piles of emails. But it at least gives you a tool to start.

I know, Dr. Hayes, you have seen a lot of these ORCAP emailing groups set up. I am very proud of the one we have here in Gainesville. But if anybody has anything, any questions about it, they can reach out to me and I'll kind of guide them through how to set that up. Huge point. Huge point. That's part of the research initiatives that we've got going on here. We've worked, as you said, really for 20 years with helping retailers set up and with their law enforcement counterparts these communication groups and through Google and other different apps

and technologies are out there, that's enabled it. I think all of us got to the point where we're saying this is great, good technology. There's a ton of connection. Myself and some on my team, we actually get all the alerts and it's pretty informative, helps us stay grounded and aware of what's going on, at least in this particular area. But like you say, the platforms may help us do a lot more, do it quicker, more efficiently, but generate mapping and targeting and things that aren't done through some of the other

communication. But that's great. If you want to contact LPRC at operations at lprc.org, we can get you in touch with Detective MacCasio. Some of the lessons learned on setting up and running, you know, an inter-retailer and law enforcement group is the key here. Daryl, any parting shots, thoughts, suggestions from you? Just one. And that kind of, again, it's going to go back to what the detective was saying is that, you know, as retailers, I think we need to take a little bit more onus and be involved in those groups and make sure that somebody from your organization is represented in those markets, in those regions.

There's lots of those groups out there. There's very similar here in Canada. But, you know, when I joined Rexall four years ago, we didn't attend any of those types of meetings. We weren't involved. We weren't actively partnering with other retailers. So the onus is on us to make those first steps and get involved. And that's the easiest way as a retailer to do that is reach out and talk to another retailer and find out where that group is or how you get access to it. another retailer and find out where that group is or how you get access to it, whether it's an in-person meeting or, like you said, it's leveraged off of Google or WhatsApp or whatever the case may

be, that's where your information sharing and partnership is going to start. And it can only evolve from there if you leverage a criminal intelligence platform of some kind. But, you know, the boots on the ground, always the first step. This is great feedback. Tom, any last parting shots from your end? No, thank you very much, both of you, for joining. It's always a pleasure. I hope to have you both back on again sometime soon. So thank you very much, Tom Ian, Detective Ryan MacCasio,

Daryl Blackmore of Rexall Canada. But for this great discussion, a lot of what we call zone five operations where we're working beyond the parking lot, which is zone four, coordinating, working together. Sometimes people will joke the offenders, the criminal offenders chat more than we do together. So these tools, this discussion is important. It's huge, and not just for theft, which has been our primary focus, but we believe as well for curtailing violent offenders, intimidation in the parking lot, as well as fraud and other types of theft.

So thanks so much, everybody, for joining in. Any other suggestions or ideas? thanks so much everybody for joining in. Any other suggestions or ideas? But thank you from the LPRC, Kevin Tran, our producer. We're always here at LPRC to answer your questions, get you guys engaged, and make people and places safer and more secure. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can 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 Laws Prevention Research Council.