LPRC - CrimeScience Episode 45 – Perspectives on Crime and Loss in the Age of COVID-19 ft. Basia Pietrawska (CAP Index)

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

The CAP Index analytics team examined retail crime reported in March in the Los Angeles area and highlighted several preliminary trends affecting retailers during the current pandemic. Dr. Read Hayes discusses the data with Basia Pietrawska, CAP Index Vice President of Consulting and Analytics, and delves into routine activity theory, Los Angeles’ weekly percentage changes in select crimes at retail establishments, and suggestions moving forward for retailers. The post CrimeScience Episode 45 – Perspectives on Crime and Loss in the Age of COVID-19 ft. Basia Pietrawska (CAP Index) 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 ControlTech discuss a wide range of topics with industry experts, thought leaders, solution providers, and many more. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point of sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance 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 from LPRC and from Gainesville, Florida. I'm going to be talking today to Basha Piotrowski. Basha is the Vice President of Consulting and Analytics, Crime Science, in my opinion, at CapIndex. And we've had the pleasure at the LPRC of working with Basha on multiple projects through the years and combining analytical techniques and critiques. And it's always good to work with other people. Bosch has also been instrumental in the Violent Crime Working Group as a co-leader. That working group has grown and active and thriving and working on multiple projects at any given time, including right now Parking Lot Lab, which we're reestablishing now,

right now, Parking Lot Lab, which we're reestablishing now, as well as helping us work on some of the projects within that, specifically crime mapping, which we continue to pull together now that we've got a new team member, too, that's going to help us reaccelerate that. And working with a software package out of Rutgers University, it or excuse me, it's called Risk Terrain Modeling RTM. So welcome to Crime Science, Basha. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me. All right. So what this podcast is about, here we are in the midst of COVID-19 crisis, the global pandemic. And what we're trying to do is look at the issues created by this pandemic, that it's creating for individuals, it's creating for organizations. But those two things are completely and totally linked. And we like to, at LPRC, of course,

look at micro environments, meso or the in-between environments, like the micro being a parking lot and, of course, the interior spaces, the meso being that connection of the parking lot through the immediate block and those areas around that place. place. And then the macro, of course, that community at large and the blocks and all the businesses and how that ecosystem works and is connected and what the places and the people are doing and how that changes. And we can see how something like this has changed the dynamics dramatically for all these reasons, shelter in place and all the different emergency warnings that go out and the guidance and so on has changed human behavior within our ecosystems at the different levels. Normally with CAP, we look more at that meso and macro mix and what's going on there affects an individual place. With having said all that, Basha, can you tell us a little bit about this special COVID-19 and crime report series that you're coming out with, starting with retail?

I understand Restaurant has just come out and you're moving forward. So could you give us the background on the report and how you've approached it? Absolutely. So as you know, Reid, at CAP, we're all about data and data-driven observations, decisions, recommendations. And in addition to providing our clients with our core crime risk data, we definitely always like to stay on top of industry trends, crime trends for different areas of the country. And we like to look at it at sort of a macro level in terms of all industries combined, but also then break it down by specific industry. And recently we have heard from a lot of our clients who are dealing with this evolving situation, that there's absolutely a need to stay connected, to stay on top of these emerging trends and to learn from them together. Because as you know,

trends and to learn from them together. Because as you know, the situation is very fluid, it's changing every day. So this is sort of our way of CAP to provide our clients and beyond our clients, really the industry, with as timely information as possible, and really just taking anything that's available out there in terms of police reported crime, any information we can gather from our clients, any even anecdotal information to support our publication and provide that as a source for everyone to hopefully benefit from. And thank you again for your contribution to the first issue focus on retail, because obviously you're one of our industry experts. And in a situation like this, where you don't always necessarily have data or

access to the data, having this perspective from an expert like you and many others is, I think, critical. So thank you again for that. So how did you decide to approach it, the report? What were your thoughts? How did you want to construct the report? And then how have you proceeded from there? So there were two components to it. The first one was basically trying to identify any data that we can use for this type of an assessment. And as I always talk about it in different presentations that I give at conferences, there's a lot of information out there and police departments are getting better and better at making it available to the public. And I'm not just talking about citywide reports or statistics that they used to provide kind of like the UCR level data. I'm talking more about address specific information that is becoming increasingly available through police departments across the country. So that was sort

of my first step to try to identify the ones that provide the information that provided up until the most recent weeks, ideally the year to date. And then the third component was being able to break it down by industry. So we can't always break it down easily by industry, but some cities like LA, like Chicago, break it down easily by industry, but some cities like LA, like Chicago, actually provide premises type information, which allows me to look at it by retail, by banking, by restaurants, and so on. And then as a criminologist, and something that you and I talk about a lot is I wanted to put it in a perspective of a theory, something that has been tested and validated in criminology, and that is the routine activities theory.

And really look at it from the perspective of what changed in terms of our offender, in terms of our target, but also the guardianship component of it. So that was sort of the idea to look at it for each industry. And like I said, we've done it for retail. Restaurants was just released, and the next one we'll be looking at will be banking. Okay, excellent. And I really was inspired by you coming up with and deciding to use Dr. Felson, Marcus Felson's routine activity approach to provide the framework and the lens to think about what the genesis of crime events are. How do these factors come together in place in time?

A likely offender, whoever that person is, and for whatever reason, they might happen to be motivated. Obviously, how they travel and move through their activity space, which is much more restricted right now. And so that was a key part that motivator likely offenders behaviors have been forced to change. And so what, but they're still offenders. I heard somebody use the comments this morning that the globally, the offenders have not all relocated and set up a colony on the moon.

They're still here. And so what does that mean? Who might they be victimizing now? But in our case, why? What are the mechanisms? Why would they victimize others? And of course, most importantly, what might we now do about that to protect the vulnerable and potential victims, whether they be an individual, a loved one, or a place? So that was great. And then the other parts of that we talked about, the factors that, okay, you have to have a likely offender who's moving around doing whatever they're doing and for whatever they're doing it for. they're doing and for whatever they're doing it for, but they come across in place and time through their routine activity across a suitable or desirable target, a human or something, some other asset that they decide is very desirable to them at that time. But in their mind or in fact, but in their mind or in fact that that target has a level of guardianship.

You know, how much risk does that provide the offender that they might get caught if they try and attack or take the target and so on. So it's it's a very simple, usable framework, but that you can really zoom in and out on. So I loved it when we were having our conversation, how we could use data, including anecdote, like you mentioned, and then think about each of these different things that were important to you to get out in that report. And by the way, we have a two-part crime science podcast episode series coming out featuring Dr. Marcus Felsen of Texas State University. So more to come on that. So let's go to the routine activity approach, the theory, and how you looked at what might be useful and actionable by the report, the reader of your report. What were your thoughts there and what have you tried to do to get out of the report? So like I said, I'm just going to go and try to talk about it in

terms of the three different components. And I'm going to start with the likely offender. And I think a lot of us, when all of the restrictions started to take place and sheltering in place was introduced in a lot of areas of the country. Obviously, the expectation is to have significantly fewer people out on the streets, hopefully including criminals. However, based upon the analysis that we conducted, that is not necessarily the case. And really just to reference something that I literally just read this morning for my area, for Philadelphia, it looks like homicides and shootings and violent crime actually went up compared to last year when you look at year-to-date numbers. And in one of the districts, they doubled. So it's a very significant increase showing that not all criminals are

sheltering in place and following the instructions from the government. And if anything, some of them are definitely taking advantage of the reduced guardianship and also some of the changes in the target itself. So when we look at the statistics for specifically LA, and I know it's just one city, but actually I'm finding a lot of these results replicating for other cities as well. You can clearly see that while crime is down for the city as a whole, for a lot of the different crime types, it is actually up for certain industries like retail, especially for some crime types. So when we looked at it, we looked at the month of March and we really tried to put it in the perspective of when the restrictions took place, which was around March 15th. And we wanted

to compare this before after effect with as much information as we had available at the time, which was sort of a two week period. And what we found was, first of all, there was a bit of an increase in assault, especially at locations that continue to operate relatively normally, like grocery stores, like convenience stores or drugstores. So we definitely noticed that, but that is not evident for the city as a whole. So there is a theory about that where customers being more agitated, frustrated, scared, and so on, may be resorting to more aggressive behavior that is affecting those that continue to work normally, that those who are serving us within the retail segments that I mentioned. So that is definitely a concern, which also translates to something that I heard from restaurants, a concern, which also translates to something that I heard from restaurants where they're seeing a bit more assault at drive-through operations with customers just being agitated, more agitated than ever.

So that is one thing. But then as far as the typical criminal and retail being a target, we're definitely seeing an increase in shoplifting, again, at those businesses that continue to operate normally. an increase in shoplifting, again, at those businesses that continue to operate normally. So while theft is down for LA, it's definitely up for those retail segments that I mentioned earlier when you look at petty theft or shoplifting. And another significant trend with obviously a lot of the locations closing or reducing hours, Burberry is significantly up. And that goes both for retail, but it also goes beyond retail because that is becoming an

attractive target for these criminals that are looking for a new way to commit their crimes. I mean, there's a lot of those motivated criminals out there still, and that is an attractive target. So there is a lot of that going on in retail. I just had a call yesterday with a restaurant group talking about a major metropolitan area in the country that was dealing with a massive, massive amount of break-ins in the area, and the perpetrator actually just got caught. So that's great, but it's just something that keeps coming up because it is a new target that may be more easily available to some. And when we think about the offender itself, we're dealing with some of the traditional criminals, but we may also be dealing with a new type of a criminal, someone with no prior criminal history that is now driven by loss of sources of income and the need to support themselves and their families.

So people who wouldn't normally resort to these crimes like shoplifting at a grocery store may be first to do that now, may be more driven to do that now. So I think there is a lot to think about when you think about it as our industry. Good insight. And I had the opportunity to get on a Brosnan intelligence briefing this morning where they had a panel of now retired senior CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and White House medicine team members as they walked and talked through some of the trends and things that they're privy to that might have effects on people at that macro level. And some of the dynamics that were described are what you were just talking through with us and that you've got this convergence of

incredible frustration that builds over time by people that are quarantined, confined, isolated, that there's this, now you've lost a job or even the ability to go and search for and apply and interview for jobs to some of the normal things we can do, and that stores may start seeing some shrinking food supply, temporary, albeit because of some of the illness in packing plants and some of the supply chain components. But then you've got these conspiracy theories and then other fuel to the fire by social media and things like that and people that are agitating, trying to divide both here in the United States and then maybe adversarial people or governments or movements outside the U.S. as well. And it's not a powerful mix for greatness, but for some concern. mix for greatness, but for some concern. And so, you know, these sort of macro dynamics are always operating. But in this case, we've got some unique aspects to that. So,

I appreciate some of your discussion around that. Yeah. Just to add one more comment, when you think about LA specifically, I think that area has some challenges, especially for the retail industry. When you think about the Prop 47 issue there, where certain offenses, law enforcement just doesn't respond to them, depending upon the amount stolen and so on. So I know that has been an issue for the area. And from what I'm hearing from my retail contacts there, that has gotten even worse. Because with police departments dealing with limited resources, some of these retail offenses are becoming even less of a priority.

Which obviously, again, that touches on the guardianship component of it, which is critical. So that's definitely something to keep in mind. And that also, I think, translates to the data. When I look at the data reported to the police departments, I always suspect that there's a lot of underreporting. And I think now more than ever, we're definitely dealing with that pretty significantly. So we're probably missing part of this picture here. And some of these increases may be even worse than what we can gather from the police department data. No, it makes sense.

And on the cluster calls we've had with our retail chain members, we've talked to close to 60 chains now as they share with each other. And we're trying to gather data and so on. But they're handicapped, like you're saying, in that there's a couple issues here. One, their people are busy doing things. In some cases, the retail APLP members are furloughed. They don't even have access to their email sometimes and aren't able to do things. So whatever crime and other events are not being documented, some of the things that

are happening, they don't even have a code for that type of behavior. It's not a normal, well, this is a burglary of a vehicle in the parking lot versus a burglary of the store or something like that. There's something else where there's some infection or some other aggressive behavior threatening somebody coughing on them to get a better place in line and so on. And nobody's documented. They don't have the time, the capability, and so on. So like you're saying, part of the briefing this morning, by the way, NYPD at any given time right now is having over 7,000 of their police officers on sick leave, which is up from their normal 1,000. Now, that department is not typical clearly because of the size, but also the ratio of officers to citizens is a little bit higher.

But anyway, so like you say, there's had to be a reprioritization and a constant reprioritization by law enforcement, dramatically reducing guardianship from that level. And then we've talked about before, there's a reduction in the report. There's not the guardianship in the stores or in the corporate offices or the distribution facilities. If nobody's there, you don't have the guardianship of the stores or in the corporate offices or the distribution facilities if nobody's there. You don't have the guardianship of the citizenry that might normally be in and visitors in those places. That guardianship could be gone. And the guardianship outside these buildings by normal traffic people on foot and in vehicles or bicycles that might provide some threat,

that's gone. And I just saw a research report really well done just before it was completed, just before the COVID-19, but they had done a series of offender interviews, very, very well done, and how readily deterred most of those offenders are by a person, even if the person is not looking at them or paying attention to them. But those unintentional guardians aren't there right now, by and large. So maybe go back over to you. What's a significant finding out of the initial retail report that you'd like to get out to the group that you may not have touched on yet? on yet? Yeah, I would say the most significant one is the increase in burglaries, which I know doesn't surprise everyone, but it really just confirms one of the biggest concerns that a lot of us had as we sort of started going into this situation. One other sort of interesting one was an increase in robberies, especially in-store robberies, right about when the restrictions took place,

or like soon after that, which could potentially imply that initially, as people sort of went into that almost survival mode, went into the stores, were agitated, were frustrated, they actually resorted to not just shoplifting, but also robberies. So that to me is obviously concerning. Anything that affects people is always obviously the more concerning aspect of it. So seeing some of these assaults go up, robberies go up, we definitely have to stay on top of it. And I truly hope that at least those incidents get reported to the police department, because that is key for them to be able to respond accordingly. And just really speaking to different industries about what they're seeing and the lack of guardianship, I just want to make sure I stress the importance of that because we're talking

about that reduced guardianship. But I think this really shows that it's so valuable for retailers and other industries to really continue to build those partnerships. Because as I'm talking to different reps from different segments, I'm seeing, I'm getting different pictures on the response from law enforcement to these incidents. For instance, restaurants have a much more positive outlook on the law enforcement part in the situation. outlook on the law enforcement part in the situation. They feel like they're getting a lot more response than maybe retail is. So it just kind of proves the point that I know you and I always talk about. And what we try to do through our meetings and local events when we

gather law enforcement reps and retailers and us as analysts and experts for everyone to really come together. And I would say now is really the time to continue to do it because that may help with the situation significantly. But as far as the trends, that's pretty much it. The one other one that I'm touching on a little bit in the report, and I'm not really sure how to explain it, perhaps it's somewhat related to the homeless population issue, that would be vandalism. We continue to find that for retail and also restaurants, vandalism is going up. And in speaking with some of my contacts, especially in the restaurant industry, I'm hearing that because these locations, like retail locations or restaurants, are some of the only ones operating in an area, they by default attract

homeless people more than ever. And with that come potentially issue, it's not always crime, but it could be something, could be some disturbance, could be other issues, could be vandalism and so on. So that's also something to be aware of. And I would be curious to hear from our retailers and how they're dealing with that aspect, especially in an area like New York City or Los Angeles that obviously deal with homeless population issues pretty much always. That's great. That's good insight. And I was going to ask you, because you've just completed the restaurant report on top of the retail report, any contrast contrast or comparisons

between those two types of businesses? You mentioned a little bit about standing out or if you're closed and standing out and things like that. But any contrast or comparisons between those two? Yes, absolutely. So for the retail assessment,

we just looked at LA data for the restaurant one. We're able to expand to also include Chicago information. And when I compared the two industries, it's clear that while we're seeing some upward trends, or actually quite a lot of upward trends for retail, for restaurant, it's mainly a downward trend. And it's pretty significant. We're talking really high percentages.

So that is a big, big difference. And when I asked them about that and their thoughts on why that is the case, they really credited a lot of that to their very strong partnerships with local law enforcement. So that really caught my attention as I'm speaking to the two different groups. And for restaurants specifically, for LA, actually before all the restrictions took place, there was an increase in crime. But afterwards, crime started to drop dramatically.

So that was very consistent. It's even more consistent for Chicago. So definitely quite different pictures for the two groups. What I'm starting to hear from restaurants going beyond the two cities is the concern about burglaries and certain isolated areas in the country are seeing some break-ins or more break-ins. And of course, with restaurants switching more to delivery, a delivery driver, which could also apply to retail, is becoming more of a target now too. So I think everyone needs to think about protecting the safety and security of delivery personnel

since that is the new means for providing something like groceries or just delivering food. Oh, well, that's fantastic. And another episode that we've recorded and is now ready for release, incidentally, is with Van at Domino's Pizza. And we do focus very heavily, as you can imagine, on delivery. And that was the intent there, that nobody's probably got more experience delivering items to people's homes

than Domino's since 1960 and Van in particular being the LP leader there in his extensive knowledge. And he's fantastic. I think you'll enjoy and get a lot out of his episode coming up. So that's a great call. I appreciate that, Bosh. So what other crime trends are you tracking? We've talked about restaurant and retail, traditional retail, if you will, stores and shops, maybe malls in that case. What else? Like I mentioned, I'm starting to look at banking. And one of the things that I also want to share, which I think applies to all industries, is one of the concerns is about the relatively newer order for everyone to wear masks, which obviously ultimately for a motivated offender provides means of concealing their identity.

So there's absolutely a concern about a potential increase in bank robberies, other types of robberies for restaurants, in-store robberies, and same thing for retail. So I think offenders are really getting a chance to take advantage of some of these measures that are supposed to help us, supposed to help spread the virus, but are also providing means for an offender to be even potentially more successful at committing these crimes. So I think we really have to stay on top of all of these trends. Good stuff. So what is next? What's coming up next, Vasha? What are you and the Cap Index team working on that we can help get out to the listening audience? Other than the banking assessment, we are going to also put together more of a general issue,

just looking at several metropolitan areas across the country and just really highlighting the overall changes of crime, which I know may be useful to some of us. It's not going to be industry specific. And at the same time, what we're trying to do, and I'm sure your team is trying that as well, is really gather data directly from the source.

So our retailers, our restaurants, our banks, because we really do believe that that part of the picture may be missing when working with police reported crimes. So that will be one of our future initiatives and really trying to also understand how these different crime trends may differ depending upon risk level. Because as you know, at CAP, we always bring everything back to what we specialize in, which is crime risk assessment. And as we're starting to look

at some of the retail data, we are seeing that some of these upward trends tend to happen in the areas that were high risk in the first place. So that is a good thing. So in terms of benchmarking, in terms of what our retailers have been doing with security measure allocation, that's somewhat of a good news is that those sort of worst areas are the ones experiencing some of those significant increases

in crime. So we'll continue to study that because I know that has been one of the questions from a lot of our partners. Is this something that's going to affect all areas, or can we still benchmark, depending upon this? Well, so I appreciate that and all you're doing. By looking at these industry specifics, looking at some of the major metropolitan areas initially, LA, Chicago, for example. That's helping us get a better peak in understanding about what's going on. And I would encourage all our listeners to pay attention to these trends on your own. And as you're looking at your places and people and how you're trying to protect in a normal environment, much less in this pandemic environment. But now as we also start to see, it looks like a staggered recovery as we incrementally come out of this thing and go back into whatever the new normal will be.

To pay attention, I saw I'm on a link or a group with criminologists around the world. I've mentioned before over a hundred criminologists from all kinds of countries, but, and everybody's always posting ideas and things to pay attention to and document data sources. And one I was looking at this morning that could play into with what you're working on, Basha, was, you know, we're, we all hear where Apple and Google are working to use the metadata, not the individual's data necessarily, but the metadata to get an idea about movement and patterns and co-locations and things like that. But you can see these severe drops, of course, in movement and distance from home and all

types of patterns and movement that we're very interested in understanding how that works and so on. And that's just another layer of data that can be put into your modeling that you all do, Basha, and others to understand how all types of dynamics, including regulations and countermeasures come into play. So that's an excellent point, right? I think there's the idea of journey to crime and really being able to study that and how that has changed more recently will be a great study. And as you know, a lot of it will come with time to really understand the true before,

after effect, we're going to have to wait a little longer, but we'll definitely do our best to try to stay on top of the more recent information and at the very end sort of try to put it together and draw conclusions. A lot of it is also it's hard to determine causation at this point. A lot of it might just be correlation, but we'll get there eventually, as you know, from an innovative perspective.

Yes, science is iterative. And I appreciate your comment about journey to crime too, obviously, that, you know, the journey to crime is the distance that an offender routinely or likely will travel to offend and come back from wherever they lay their head at night. And so we're always trying to understand. And if we're looking concent we're always trying to understand. And if we're looking concentric circles and trying to understand what the threat around this is, if right now it does look like that the journey to crime is much shorter,

unfortunately, family members are more likely to be victimized by people that routinely victimize others, criminal offenders. They're gonna offend, they're gonna victimize somebody or something. And so it looks like that temporarily, probably that journey to crime has been decreased. We're not seeing as much travel, period, even by criminal offenders on who they're going to attack. Yeah, it actually just brings up one last point I was hoping to make for LA.

Actually, just one last point I was hoping to make for LA. I think a lot of us are assuming that domestic offenses will see an increase because partially because of what you just said. It did surprise me that LA reported a decrease, which again, I think that points to some sort of underreporting because I'm sure you would agree that there's a lot of speculations out there, even from our expertise, from what we've seen is domestic offenses would probably go up. So that's another thing we want to try to stay on top of if we're able to gather appropriate data. No, I think your comment is very appropriate. And, you know, that's why we're paying attention to is reporting.

What is reporting? And that's why we're paying attention to is reporting. What is reporting? And somebody used the anecdote the other day that they were in a comm stat meeting at NYPD and a captain and a precinct commander is going through their crime stats and so on, and they get to domestic violence and said, well, here's what we're seeing here. And the overall NYPD commander challenges that leader and says, now, did you get that from people that came to your officers and reported? Or did you get that? Or did you additionally, are you gathering your data from hospital emergency departments, from shelters, from call-in centers and other ways? You know, now in this day and age too, social media posts and

things like that. How are we measuring crime? What are the ways that we might measure it more accurately so that we can more effectively prevent that type of crime? So I think you make a big point about underreporting, and that is something that most people predicted. Hey, I think we'll see an increase. Maybe we did, maybe we didn't, but the initial data don't look like that. But that may be, like you're saying, in part or completely because people aren't able to report or as likely to report right now, particularly when, where are they going to go? They can't even go out and go somewhere else maybe, and they don't want to make the call in front of the person that's abusing them. Exactly.

Well, I want to do on behalf of all of our listeners, the LPRC team, the University of Florida's Crime Prevention Research Team, as well, for all your insights, all the hard and good work that you and your team at CAP Index are doing. And we look forward to talking to you further as your research progresses. But thank you for joining us on Crime Science today, Basha. Absolutely. Thank you so much, guys. All right.

Be safe and all our listeners the same. We wish you a safe and productive upcoming time here. Please let us know any suggestions or ideas you might have for a Crime Science podcast episode that you think would be informative and interesting to the listener. I want to thank Logan Brown, who's standing in for our normal producer, Kevin Tran today. And to all of you out there, stay safe.

Thank you. 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 find more Crime Science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. Thank you.