LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 103 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

LPRC is Speaking at LPF/LPM Annual Meeting! Protests Continue! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss the declining China economic and retail performance for April, LPRC speaks in front of major companies CEO’s, the top 3 technologies that are getting forcus in retail in 2022, big techs role in censoring violence in social media, and the good news on all the store openings in physical retail in the first quarter of 2022. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 103 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-s 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 for the LPRC. This is the latest in our weekly update series coming to you from Gainesville. And I'll be joined today again by colleagues Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan and our producer Diego Rodriguez. We'll zip through this. I'm getting ready to go get on an airplane, everybody. But looking at COVID-19, new studies around repeated infections, very interesting. How often will people, humans, possibly get infected and reinfected by COVID-19?

There evidently are millions of people that have been reinfected, some within months of a prior infection. Some estimates from some scientists are estimating that this could be that type of endemic virus where we've got people getting infected up to three times a year, maybe even more. And think again, go back to some of the rhino viruses or I guess coronavirus colds that we get. Some people will get them two, three times a year. And some people will catch the flu more than once as well. So, stay tuned for more on that. But the virus, as they look at it, just

really continues to generate new variants, new ways to escape our natural immune systems, vaccines, and so forth. That's what viruses do. So stay tuned. But it looks like while infections are up currently, death rates are way down. Sometimes much is half or more. So that's encouraging. But you have to always, always dig into the data and understand who is it that's getting infected and why and how and how seriously are they infected? And of course, and why and how and how seriously are they infected? And, of course, who, again, succumbs to the disease and what's the background factors there? What are some of the other dynamics happening to better understand protection?

There's still some recommendations for masking, but you're seeing by and large most of the estimates are, unless you're talking about an N95 properly fitted or a KN95 type mask properly fitted or a couple of surgical masks or something like that, that it's not particularly effective, even though there's still some evidence that just, again, screening out some of the viral particles on one or both ends can reduce the inoculum or the dosing that another person might onboard, and that can help explain the seriousness of the illness they might get or have to fight based on the amount of inoculum. So, looking over at some of the new testing coming out,

finally, there's going to be in-home testing that will be widespread, non-prescription, that would not only be for a COVID or a coronavirus-type testing, but also RSV and flu. We talked about that earlier, the utility and value of something like that, where if some member of the family is feeling very ill, looks like they've got a virus, some type of infection, to know is it RSV, is it influenza, is this coronavirus could be very helpful. So stay tuned on that. The U.S. government, the administration saying they're getting ready to make available millions more COVID tests that people can order again for in-home testing should they want to do that. Looking around the world, we see China, certain areas, dealing with a lot of infections, but sometimes beyond harshly. There looks to be some at least temporary, very severe damage to the economy, as well as mental health and these incredible, sometimes violent crackdowns. But then we look to North Korea that some reports are saying have 0%

vaccination, that the infection has just gone rampant. They're scrambling and evidently a pretty brutal society and how they're dealing with this is no exception. Looking at the vaccines available right now in human clinical trials, 120, 55 that we're looking at in phase one trials, candidates, 48 vaccine candidates in phase two, another 48 now in phase three. You see a lot moving into heavy-duty extensive testing. And then again, 31 are in current use. One that I understand many physicians and particularly infectious disease docs are looking forward to in the United States is one called Covaxin. It's evidently not an mRNA, which they are very high on, that most of us have been vaccinated, God, but are looking at this as a total virus that's been neutralized, but that allows the immune system to recognize not only the spike protein or parts of the spike protein, which has proven very powerful in preventing serious disease,

but the Covaxin looks to be 93% efficacious in those under 60, you know, roughly over 70% for those up to X amount of age, diminishing down to really about 65 to 70%. So it looks to be highly efficacious, very, very safe, but may provide even more protection since more parts of a coronavirus particle would be recognized and reacted to and neutralized by our systems, our immune systems, the innate and adaptive. So stay tuned on that. Moving over to the LPRC front, looking at, I'll be on the road this week speaking in Chicago to NACS, the National Association of Convenience Stores, the CEO Summit. Very excited about that. We're going to be talking about aggressive street behavior, as I mentioned before, homeless and harm. You know, what do we do? How do we work collectively with communities, with each other, with our law enforcement partners or those in other areas to help reduce the issue?

As well as, of course, now, how do we tactically and collectively, collaboratively work on place protection? And we'll go through all types of harms created from just impeding movement in and out of a parking lot or in and out of a store or part of the store or, say, the restroom over to intimidation where customers or employees are not even coming to that location or not returning to that location, as well as quite a bit of theft. And then again, even very aggressive behavior, overdoses and other non-responsive other situations there. And future research to be done, particularly by our team here at the LPRC. Then later this week, speaking at the LPRC Lost Branch and Foundations event in Charlotte. So excited about both of those there. We'll be going through a lot of good research that Dr. Corey Lowe on the LPRC team, senior research scientist, has conducted on organized retail crime, pulling together some other research, but looking at articulating and really discussing

what are some better and better ways to detect the issue, to find the issue, to help the law enforcement, the community, legislatures better understand the dynamics, but help us on the scene get better at protecting the merchandise, protecting the things that are being stolen, the fraud that's being committed in an organized way, getting better at that self-protection. And then finally getting better at documenting these events, tying an individual to a specific event, and even better, tying that individual to other individuals and those individuals to a series of events, a continuing criminal enterprise. You hear RICO charges and so on, but for that sort of continuing criminal enterprise, how do we tie all this together, write better, more complete, but succinct reports that include all the elements of the crime, that include much better documentation of digital signatures from smartphones, tag numbers, vehicle descriptions,

of course, all types of facial and other body imagery that can be used to further identify these people, identify the crimes, help articulate, tie them together, and come up with much better cases. And as we see more states standing up, special prosecutors, task forces, and so on to assist retailers on our side. We need to get better at, again, all the above. So stay tuned on that. Look forward to LPRC, different summits that we've got coming up. Again, violent crime, supply chain protection, both taking place in Philadelphia this summer. We've got the SOC and Sensor Summit coming from the LPRC Innovation Working Group. We'll be in Gainesville in late August. We're excited about that. And then, of course, the Impact Conference coming up that October 3rd through 5th. So please hit the LPRC

website, subscribe to the LPRC Connect newsletter at lpresearch.org or operations at lpresearch.org. So come by our labs, pay us a visit, let us know what you all think. Everybody stay safe out there. Let me now turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony. Thank you, Reid, for all those great updates. Let me start this week from CNBC with a summary on the latest data on China's economic performance. For April 2022, China reported a drop in retail sales and industrial production far worse than analysts had expected.

Retail sales fell 11.1% in April from a year ago, more than a 6.1% decline predicted in the Reuters poll. Industry production dropped 2.9% in April from a year ago, in contrast to the expectation of a slight increase of 0.4%. Now I keep focusing on China because this is alarming news as China is a major market for many global retailers that listen to the podcast. Additionally, pre-COVID, the country was also leading innovation in the digital to physical retail space. So we all need to keep an eye on China as it is a vital contributor to future global growth. Let me switch now to a different topic and summarize some interesting data from this past week

presented in an IHL webinar. In 2021 IHL reported that North America saw retail losses of 165 billion billion due to shrink and insufficient management of digital journeys. All those new store services or digital journeys that we added during the pandemic are detracting from margin versus traditionally walking into a store and doing shopping personal, your own shopping the top three highest average margin point loss Include buy online return to store which has an average margin loss of eight point one percent

Buy online pick up in stores ship to store for pickup as a net point loss of 6.8 percent and buy in store ship from warehouse as a net point loss of 6.3 percent interesting especially for this audience the top three technology priorities for all retailers for 2022 are number one inventory visibility number two pos 22 are number one inventory visibility number two pos uh refresh infrastructure and number three personalized uh customer experience number one again is is a lot of the technologies that we talked about at the lpsc like rfid and also computer vision those play well in inventory visibility also very interesting for retailers that grew more than 10 percent in the previous year and are considered industry leaders,

the top three technology priorities for this group are contactless payments, inventory visibility, and optimizing profitability for those digital journeys that we just talked about a few minutes ago. And let me end this week with a really, really great summary from NRF on what happened in terms of store openings and closings in the first quarter of 2022 for the USA retail industry. In the first three months of 2022,

major U.S. headquartered retailers are now planning to open 4,400 stores, similar to the first three months of last year, and to close only 635 stores, which is down from about 2,100 closing announcements in the first calendar quarter of 2021. As has been the case for some time now, the opening announcements are concentrated in discount dollar and off price sectors, which have various qualities, elements and make them less vulnerable to online competition and less translatable to e-commerce in general than many other retailers five below now just some example in terms of who's opening and closing five below which expanded his price point uh above five dollars which is five beyond initiative really announced plans to triple the store count to more than 3,500 by the end of fiscal 2030. The company will open 925 to 1,000 stores over the next four years on a base of more than 1,200 stores.

Family Dollar is planning to open 400 new stores each year on a base of 8,000 plus stores, while Dollar Tree is planning to open 190 stores on a base of also 8,000 plus stores. Donald General is also aggressively growing with plans to open 1,110 stores in 2022. Turning to the off-price retailers, TJ Maxx announced plans to open 150 new stores this year across this concept on a base of nearly 4,700 stores. Burlington plans to open 90 stores on a base of 840. And Ross stores said it will open 75 new stores, dress for less, Ross dress for less, and 25 DD discounts this year on a base of more than 1,900 stores. On a combined basis and including a few others and I mentioned above Discount dollar and off price retailer are now plans to open 2240 stores or roughly half of the amount announced

New stores in 2020 year to date from March. So really good news any continues O'Reilly automotive said it it plans to open 175 to 185 new stores which implies just over 3% growth on their base of 5700 stores advanced auto parts plans to open 125 250 stores and our base of 5,000 stores. AutoZone is also growing a store base, but has announced, but they haven't announced yet what the real number is. The research also confirmed the trend that I've been talking about for a long time, which is all those stores that were selling new stuff online only are now opening physical stores.

Walby Parker announced plans to open 40 new stores on a base of 160 which implies 25% growth. Other digital natives opening stores includes Lab Athleta brand which will open 30 to 40 stores which will open 30 to 40 stores on a base of 227. Fabletics, which expects to open 30 new stores on a base of 70. And Allbirds, which is planning to open 16 to 17 stores on a base of 35. So again, physical stores are becoming important to all those digital natives that only saw your line.

Now, who's closing stores? On the opposite side, Full Locker is leading becoming important to all those digital natives that only saw your line now who's closing stores on the opposite side full locker is leading among the retailers closing stores with closing 190 stores on its base of 2800 for luck was also planning a hundred new stores this year however so the net plan reduction is just 90 stores other retailers closing stores include amazon which is closing its brick and mortar bookstores and four-star stores gap and banana republic north america which plans to close 50 to 60 tours combined out of an out of these 1,425 stores. And then Chico said it will close 40 of its 1,200 stores

and Children's Place said it plans to close 40 stores out of its 670 base. So overall really good news for physical retail, which is very important here at the Loss Prevention Research Council. So join us to see where we take physical stores next. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom. I apologize if there's background noise,

I'm actually in Las Vegas at RFID journal taping this and wanted to kind of start out with, it's a pretty hefty crowd at RFID Journal and one of the great things is Joe Cole from Macy's spoke about ORC. I'll be speaking about a new product related to ORC and then there's a lot more conversation about total RFID in retail, not just inventory visibility, what are the asset protection applications? What are some of the buy online, pick up store applications? So a lot of more talk and a tremendous amount of traffic and energy. It's kind of the same feel that I think we spoke about at Rela.

People really being out and engaging both from the international front and the domestic front. So very exciting stuff and I feel like much with everything else, the digital transformation in retail, there's a much greater emphasis on the need for RFID and the understanding of how it will help as a total solution. So very exciting things there. And I'm sure that I'll have more to chat about in the next episode.

Also wanted to just kind of talk about some of the things that are occurring around civil unrest. We're seeing pockets of civil unrest popping up all throughout the country. And we have this kind of dynamic political situation where we have some civil unrest about some of the unfortunate shootings, civil unrest around abortion, and we just have a kind of a melting pot of civil unrest popping up. To date we have not seen as much violence or looting, but we continue to monitor and look at if when and if we need to activate the fusion center so definitely something that we'll we'll continue to monitor i feel like we we are repetitive and talking about this but i think there's a need to always keep it top of mind

and then uh certainly not the last thing i'd like to talk about today but i thought it was relevant that we had one of the active shooting incidents in the past couple of weeks, there were several, was actually live streams. So here's this, we talk about social media and how to monitor and where we are today, where you have an active shooter event where someone is live streaming the event, live streaming the driving up to it, live streaming the actual event. So you have this horrific, terrible crime happening

and the live streaming of it. And it just brings a whole new level of kind of what we often talk about here is how do you consume all of those sensors to help for early indication? I don't think in this particular instance, social media monitoring would have helped because of the timing but it's important to just revisit when you do have a social media monitoring program how you deal with the

data, how you access it, and what actions you take when you do have something that occurs. I was actually traveling when it occurred and within a few minutes of it, there were just hundreds of videos of the event occurring and replays, some through media with obviously very limited and then some through back channels on the internet. So as we continue to evolve in this social media world, what can we do as retailers, law enforcement professionals and college influencers to take advantage of the social media aspect of it? I think, again, in this circumstance, it would be very hard to do things differently.

This was being streamed, live streamed in a manner that I think, you know, looking back at it, I'm not sure that there could have been reaction taken. But the next question is, what can we learn from the live streaming in the next event? The next question is what can we learn from the live streaming in the next event? One thing I think we're starting to hear is what is the social responsibility angle of social media? We've talked many times about big tech and how big tech is in this kind of interesting conundrum because they are privately held companies and what is their duty to censor? What is their duty to take action? And how you have that kind of middle ground of anytime any action is taken anytime anything is done there are usually two sides of it obviously with violence that's not the case but are there are there methodologies that will be implemented

there is advanced ai that is out that is available and today social media is using some really advanced AI to identify child pornography, sexually explicit content, and violent content. So I think we're going to continue to see that evolve. And over the next six to eight months, we may see some more AI being utilized to try to identify this through live streaming. So I think it's a space that's very interesting and that we should keep an eye on. And then I just want to touch on one last thing from a cybersecurity risk platform because I think this is something that's new to the kind of mainstream audience, not new to the back channel cybersecurity risk audience. But most modern smartphones, and especially phones that were in the last three to five years have a feature that would allow you even if your phone is powered down to identify where it is well much like

any technology out there there are some nefarious actors that are being able to take advantage of that and actually hacking into a phone even if it's turned off so yes you're hearing that right even if your device is turned off, certain phones have the capability of still emitting and receiving a signal. There's kind of a couple different use cases. The real good reason here is if you were trying to track a lost or stolen device and it was turned off, you'd still be able to use it, but it also allows for some of the far-rights actors to do things. So as we talk about the risk plans they've been changing, some of the mitigation methods don't actually

act the way you think. And then also I think it's just important that if you are in a position where you really want to be privacy conscious, you think that just turning the phone off will do it, it actually doesn't. And there are some settings and ways to kind of turn some of these features off, but by

design, this is to help people track a phone if they lose it. The reason I think it's important to talk about it here is because as we talk about risk, we're continuing to see more sophisticated attacks that are taking advantage of some of the feature sets that are designed to help you protect your devices. So we'll continue to monitor that much like we do with everything else. And with that, I will turn it back over to Reid. Thank you. 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, 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. 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.