LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 102 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Shortages Continue to Plague the US! LPRC Summits are Coming Together! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss the introduction of Pfizer pills to combat COVID-19, the rise of inflation and buying used consumer products, protests continue from Roe v. Wade leak, ransomware attacks happen every 8 seconds the top 3 targets are shared, and consumers still prefer physical stores. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 102 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. 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. This is the latest in our weekly series from the LPRC. And I'm joined today by Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, as well as our producer Diego Rodriguez. And I want to welcome everybody. me in as well as our producer Diego Rodriguez and want to welcome everybody. We'll take a quick trip, spin around the world, update where we are, where we're trying to head here. And so just a quick look at the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, continuing new viral variants, which is to be expected, including in the United States,

one that appears to be a spinoff, a sub-variant of the Omicron variant itself, particularly hitting hard right now in the Northeast and some other areas, expected to then hit pretty hard in the Southeast and other areas as well. We see in Shanghai and others where there was a very naive population from an immunity standpoint, according to the research I'm looking at, they've been hit very hard, both unvaccinated or, you know, naive to the virus from natural infection there. Which contrasts with the United States, where it's now estimated that over 89%, almost 90% of U.S. adults have been vaccinated, at least with one dose,

mostly with all recommended doses, depending on the type. We have seen the J&J has been suspended and curtailed due to some of the clotting issues and recommendations for boosting for those that had one dose, again, to contribute to severe disease issues. You know, you look at some of the daily infection rates, and in 2021, today, exactly, as we're recording this on Tuesday, As we're recording this on Tuesday, we're looking at 41,000 new infections over the X amount of hour period compared to now. We're looking at 74,000. Now, again, tough, less testing going on now, which does make it a little more concerning. But clearly, he's indicating there are waves, including in New York City, where they're much greater than 20% positivity, and they're experiencing their fifth wave of viral infections. And looking at trying to understand, in some of the research I'm reading, particularly one study, why are some never infected?

I know myself and most of my family, for some reason, haven't been, but known infection. So there are people volunteering for trials and you're trying to get an idea of what's going on with that. Looks like a combination, again, of antibodies, of course, exposure. You know, there are the behavioral things we've talked about throughout this that prevent us from being victimized from crime, or at least reducing the probability, the same here, with being victimized by a virus, and so some of the distancing and masking and so on. In other words, reducing the exposure to any or enough viral infection load, inoculum of the viral particles. But then you look at the interior, what is it about our antibodies, the B cells that generate new antibodies, how the T cells work. It does look like both immunity from natural infection as well as from vaccination or a combination of the two generate these T cells, the cellular activity we've

talked about according to the research literature before. And so that that's what, but the T cells again are designed to kill infected cells. So there is an infection, but they reduce the severity of that infection by reducing the spread in the number of infected cells that our bodies have. So that's where the severity comes in. So again, the immune system is activated first, the antibodies, then B cells and T cells by, again, a natural exposure and infection, as well as the vaccination or both. And so what is it about it, though, when they look at people that were non-vaccinated that have not been infected? So it's just like what we talk about in crime prevention. It's a combination of exposure, access, and how well we combat it. And so the lessons learned, a lot of parallels, which is a big reason we talk about this pandemic and what

we can learn from the research literature and the biological sciences that are applicable to us in the socio-behavioral. The Pfizer pill, heavily prescribed now. They're still seeing some rebound where people are getting infected, but they saw evidently in the randomized controlled trials that are continually conducted that they saw about 1% of those treated with pill and not treated with pill had rebound infections. infections. So it's something to keep an eye on. Moving over now to the LPRC today, as a matter of fact, we have a meeting with the Gainesville Police Department, some of the command staff going through better ways to work on mutual research and development along partnerships between law enforcement or public entities and private entities, and then between private entities, and that's what LPRC is all about. How do we work collectively and collaboratively? How do we work individually? And so we're excited for today's meeting at our labs, a lot of mapping discussions, a lot of mapping informed planning. So excited about that.

Last week and the week before and a little bit this week, we continue to have big visitors coming in from ultra-wideband 5G provider companies looking at ways that we can get lightning fast, highly secure, low latency, in other words, technologies in our interior labs that simulate store environment, as well as the exterior labs that we have those environments to see, since cellular and solar provide a lot more flexibility and protective technology, devices, strategies, and so on, in addition to those that are wired, which can provide additional bandwidth for us. So, also NVIDIA, some of the top people visiting, planning, brainstorming with us to look at opportunities there.

We're excited about all that's going on with the LPRC SOC lab program. The VMS is serverly playing a huge role in bringing together a lot of key players. With Milestone, so far, VMS installed a lot of key players with milestone so far vms installed a lot of technologies being leveraged including sure views um and and several others that are on the way or are being installed now to provide world-class and unparalleled uh capability as a command center we had excellent calls yesterday with some more. We're excited about some of the new sensors and things are happening. Flock Safety is another one with Axon, Axis, and several other body-worn camera providers that are giving us some cutting-edge technologies that we're excited

about. So, we're looking at all types of visual, a oral, and digital sensors we talked about in the past, how to link them together for earlier detection, better and earlier definition of an issue, and then better and more rapid and correct dissemination for better decision making. So both at the place level for that place manager, he or she, as well as at the enterprise level. And really moving quickly, Orion and team are working on that. James supporting with a lot of sophisticated mapping and growing now that more people are traveling. Any and every one of you all that are current or considering being a current solution partner,

member of the LPRC, we'd invite you to schedule a time to onboard your technology or update or upgrade your technology if you're already deployed in our labs. Due to the heavy load anticipated here based on the already how many retail LPAP decision makers are in our labs, coming through our labs individually or in groups, are now coming up with some of our summits, including our SOC and sensor summit we've talked about before, the S3, that is part of our innovation working group. So stay tuned on that. We've got already the agendas put together for supply chain protection, violent crime summit, the product protection summit, which, by the way, is scheduled for

June 15th, Diego tells me, with all solution partners that want to be considered for that summit, their data, their submission by May 20th to Dr. Corey Lowe, Corey at lpresearch.org. But all these summits are underway, heavy planning. Impact, again, the October 3rd through 5th in Gainesville. Plan to be here. Get you, your team in here. If you're an SP, plan on looking at sponsorship opportunities. It allows you more people as well than the normal two. We'll be speaking at NACS next week on the 18th of May up in Chicago. And this is the CEO Summit for all the North American convenience stores. So you're going to see a whole bunch of CEOs in there and me really discussing a lot of our research, research of others along what's happening with street behavior

that's taking place, the aggressive behavior that's taking place on, around, in their properties and spaces and places and opportunities with them. The next day, we'll be presenting results at the LP Foundations meeting in Charlotte, in this case, around organized retail crime research that Corey Lowe has been conducting with James Martin, helping MAP and the rest of us going through. So look for that, two presentations. The other thing is we have a lot of people asking about LPRC, and we've been putting them out there, the links, but the Florida Trend magazine, it's kind of the Florida power magazine, if you will, for politicos and corporations, and has been for probably 60, 70 years now. Florida Trend magazine, the April edition has a nice feature really describing the LPRC, the genesis, the progress, how we operate.

It's just a neat behind-the-scenes view. how we operate. It's just a neat behind-the-scenes view. The same thing with University of Florida's Explore magazine, UF Explore. That is the magazine that features cutting-edge research and developments coming out of the University of Florida. That, too, has wide circulation throughout the state here and somewhat nationally. But another really nice feature article profiling the LPRC as well. But the University of Florida Safer Places Lab is featured, of course, in both Florida Trend and UF Explorer Magazine. So we invite you to stay tuned for that. I'm going to go ahead now and turn it over to our colleague, Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, if you could weigh in on some of your wisdom and insights. Thank you, Reid, for all those great updates. Let me start this week and apologies for my voice,

but allergies have been really bad recently. Some disturbing news from NBC News and CNBC on another shortage. This time it a baby formula in the united states according to some new data just published the share of baby formula out of stocks across the united states at 40 on april 24th according to data assembly that's up from 29 percent in march inflation supply chain shortages and product recalls have continued to bring volatility to the category, and it continues to be one of the most affected products in the market. The states seeing the worst shortages include Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota, all with out-of-stock rates of about 50 percent a total of 26 states have out of stock rates of 40 to 50 percent among the metro area san antonio has at the worst in terms of our stock in baby formula where it's climbed to 57 percent memphis and nashville are second at 52 percent and Houston and Des Moines are third at 50%. So not good news on baby formula.

Let me switch to another topic that's been on my mind with all this concern on inflation. Are we buying more used or second-hand products in the United States? For the, let's look at a new survey just published by Statista. The top five categories that consumers buy used and the percentage who purchased secondhand in the last 12 months are number one, clothing at just over 30 percent, number two, and this was surprising, shoes and nearly 20 percent, and this was surprising, shoes and nearly 20 percent. Number three makes sense, books, movies, music, and games and nearly 17 percent. Bags and accessories are number four at 16 percent and consumer electronics is number five at 13 and a half percent. As Sassista said, the high inflation is not pushing a majority of consumer to buy used. It's far from fashionable to basically buy secondhand, washing it and then get some compliments from your fashionistas

on social media. Let me switch next to some very important news in terms of what's happening in our ports, and this one is from Chain Storage. As they say, this spring, the nation's major retail container ports set a new record and are expected to continue to set new records going forward. The increased volume comes as retailers bringing merchandise ahead of rising costs and further supplying chain issues, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker Report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates. US ports covered by the Global Port Tracker handle 2.34 20-foot equivalent units or TEUs in March,

the last month for which the final numbers are available. That was up nearly 11 percent from February and up 3.2 percent year on year. It also topped the previous record of 2.33 tu set in May 2021 for the number of containers imported in a single month since the NRF began tracking imports in 2002. For the first six months of 2022, U.S. ports are expected to import a total of 13.5 million t use up for 5.1 percent year on year uh to give you a comparison imports for all 21 all of 2021 increased um to uh 25.8 to use which was an increase of 17 over 2020 uh which again was a record of 22 tu so you remember there's a lot of backloading with the holiday so we're off to a really really strong start with imports and again it's being driven by consumer spending is growing faster than income growth and perhaps shoppers are trying to get

ahead of buying the rising prices buying buying ahead of the rising prices. And importers are seeing the same as they continue to replenish their inventories, doing so protect them against potentially rising freight costs, further delaying in supply chains, and as I said, potential complications in upcoming labor negotiations that are coming up on the US West Coast. So supply chain issues continue at our ports because there's

a huge demand and it continues. Finally this week I want to go to some good news and this again is from chain store storage and the importance of physical stores more than half of us consumers or rather shop in store than any other method that's according to new research from the customer engagement specialist emerson which found that 54 percent of consumers prefer brick and mortar retail to any other channel with more than twice as many um were more than twice as many preferring to it to shopping via mobile at 21 percent and via laptops and computers than 18 however huge value remains in digital channels Two in five consumers couldn't live without online shopping, and younger audiences push the boundaries. 30% have made purchases on TikTok, so buying on social media,

while one in 10 are using Alexa or other smart speakers. Time spent across all channels is fleeting, according to the study where consumer shopping for an average of two hours per week. Retailers need to reach consumers where they want to shop, be that in the store or as well, according to the advice that MRS is providing. The study also noted that changes in consumer prevalence across different industries in food, for example, despite the rise in online groceries, consumers are still four times more likely to buy in person than online. For travel purchases, by contrast, 23% of consumers prefer to shop online compared to 5% in store.

And then in fashion, this was surprising. 21% prefer to shop online versus an almost identical 20% prefer the in-store experience. And with all the missing sizes and so on, so buying all that stuff online, which causes many returns, that last statistic was surprising. So summarizing this week, product shortages, continuous supply chains are stressed, and baby formula is one of the latest examples. Inflation has not stopped consumers in preferring to buy new versus used, and yes, surprised that 20% of us buy used shoes. All the search that supports to get ahead of inflation and labor issues is keeping supply challenges challenging going forward. stores is where the where is the place to be when it comes to retail future but digital influences here to stay especially for younger consumers and finally the LPRC is the place when you can test new ideas and stay current on the latest in retail and with that let me turn it over to Tom.

Okay, well, hello, everybody. Thank you, Reid. Thank you, Tony. I just wanted to kind of give a quick recap because last week we were taping within hours of kind of the leaked story about the Roe versus Wade piece. And we weren't even sure at that point if it was actually a true story.

It has, in fact, been confirmed that it was leaked. There's a lot more to it. The opinion is based on something that was brought up from a Mississippi piece. So this was just an opinion. But what I wanted to just talk about is the potential for continued civil unrest. We've seen protests throughout the United States and major cities related to this. I would say with minimal disruption compared to the past, I hate to say this, but in the last 18 to 24 months, we've seen more civil unrest than we have in many years. So I think we're a little bit more equipped, both emotionally and from a response standpoint.

socially and from a response standpoint. We'll continue to monitor it here at the LPRC and activate the fusion net if we see it necessary. One thing that we do know from research and from other things related to civil unrest, as the weather gets nicer, potentially that does allow for more things to occur. And also we know as in the hotter climates that sometimes some of that somewhere else potentially can turn violent due to temperature. So we'll watch that very closely and we'll continue to keep the group up to speed on what we're hearing.

With that, we're also seeing a rash of kind of attacks, if you will, on different types of institutions, some churches, some pro-life events where there have been arson. So there is a lot of things that are occurring that we'll continue to really monitor and stay on top of. I wanted to talk a little bit about cybersecurity and risk. And with ransomware, retail is officially no longer in the top two attacked vectors for ransomware manufacturing has kind of taken over the financial slot which pushes retail still in the top three but today based on the attacks that we're seeing they're really heavily focused on the manufacturing and utility world and then banking

and then retail, still a third. It's important to note that that's still a substantial number. The most recent report suggests that there's a ransomware attack every eight seconds. So keep that in perspective of how much this occurs. That's up from every 11 seconds. So the attacks continue to become more sophisticated and continue to happen. And I think it's also important to note that when you have a significant uptick in attacks, you may actually, even though you're not the highest target in retail, you may still be actually getting the same, if not more attacks based on the fact that yeah moving down to three the third most targeted um is somewhat relative when you have much much more attacks occurring so uh there is a whole bunch of news

around where these attacks are coming from but the reality is that um it's just it doesn't look like it's going away the sophistication of the attacks isn't increasing these attacks are now um you know becoming a lot smarter so something to just certainly keep in in mind when we're talking about that uh here today the other thing we're starting to see is uh as we as retailers become more, and we talk about this on the show, using artificial intelligence to identify fraud in the credit space, we have some of the bad actors really taking a large amount of time to figure out ways to use artificial intelligence and their benefit to really come after retailers for fraud. So what years ago

would be a basic script attack has really become a very advanced attack that looks for ways to overcome or get around some of the measures that were put into place. So as we always say, we're talking about things on this podcast to help prevent and doing research. And some of the nefarious actors are doing the same. You know, they may very well be listening to the podcast, actually, to get research and information. That is part of the things that we're seeing. And I think we know that when what as we continue to come up with new ways to approach things, we'll see that as well. ways to approach things. We'll see that as well. I'm not going to talk too much about it, but we're continuing to see this trend of smash and grabs, flash mobs, and organized retail crime occurring. A lot of these are occurring in brazen fashion in broad daylight. One thing I will say is that

as masks come off, there are some indications that we are getting a little bit back to normalcy in was just put yourself in a position to be safer. And that behavior changed dramatically during COVID because, of course, what we have, we had tons of folks walking around with masks. So all of that kind of decades worth of experience of what to do went out the window and today I was actually speaking to someone that I know in the NYPD and he said that in the Diamond District when they're seeing smash and grabs that they're at least able to identify someone coming up to the gate or the window with a mask on and they're on guard. He said, so however crazy it sounds, they're reacting, whether that be hitting a silent alarm. A lot of the folks that there have drop gates that they can put down in real time. So it's a very interesting dynamic. And I know that

the LPRC talks about that often in the violent crimes working group and how to work with those type of scenarios because we are in this ever-changing environment which does of course affect things and then uh wanted to talk a little bit about bitcoin and cryptocurrency because we're starting to see a trend where uh cryptocurrency and bitcoin specifically i'm just using it because it's the largest coin as an example is following the stock market or the market woes. So up until recently, it was kind of in a class of its own that while very didn't necessarily follow the trends with the open markets. And we're now starting to see

that it is in fact dipping and ebbing and flowing with the market, which causes a bit of concern for some of the experts in the financial state, because you have this very volatile, very challenging to predict the form of currency that now is, well, it's following the market patterns. It doesn't have the same back end or information to go with it. So a very, very interesting thing that I personally thought would occur. I'm surprised it took as long, but as larger investors invest in it, I think that we're starting to see a little bit more of a shift into the professional investment world where those investors are, you know, hedging and weighing their risks, which in turn is causing it to go up and down. I think as of yesterday, it was below thirty four thousand.

Still a big number compared to where it was, but something to certainly watch and see what the future holds. I often talk about Bitcoin and crypto because it's on the playing field all the time of what retailers should or should not take it, what does it mean for them, and there are just a tremendous amount of unknowns still there. And then last but certainly not least, and we say it so regularly, it feels like I say it all the time,'s to go out and patch your phones. If you have an Android phone, you want to patch it. There's a patch that just came through for a pretty significant vulnerability. It's a quick and easy thing to do. It doesn't cost you anything.

And my kind of rule of thumb, and I was at a conference last week, and it was for American or started the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and someone said yeah every time I patch my phone you know I always like to wait because of there's always inherently a bug and my advice is that bug will be a lot less of a burden for you than you potentially having a cyber incident on your personal device or on an actual work device. So simple, easy thing to do is if you have an update, go ahead and update it. It will pay dividends in the future. And with that, I will turn it back over to Reid. All right. Thanks so much, Tom, for all that information. Thank you, Tony, as well. Thank you, Diego, our producer. And of course, mostly thank you all for listening.

We'd love you to contribute. It's at operations at lpresearch.org is the best way to get ahold of us. Always check out. Diego and team are always updating lpresearch.org, the website, new stuff all the time. If you're not getting the Connect newsletter, again, If you're not getting the Connect newsletter, again, queue us up. It's no problem. It's free. It's for everybody. And it's at operations at lpresearch.org.

So everybody stay safe and connected. Take care. 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. 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 Loss Prevention Research Council.