LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 159 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio Ft. Tom Arigi

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

This week on CrimeScience, Dr. Hayes discusses our preparation for the IMPACT conference coming up in October with visitors in the labs. We also have another guest this week with Tony D’Onofrio interviews Tom Arigi of American Freight regarding his long career in LP/AP and his opinions on the state of the industry. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 159 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio Ft. Tom Arigi 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. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast, this is the latest in our weekly update series, and I'm joined by co-hosts Tom Meehan and Tony D'Onofrio and our producers Diego Rodriguez and Wilson Gaborino. And we're going to talk a little bit about crime and loss, but also opportunities, threats and warnings, and a little bit of discussion with an absolute expert. And today,

what I'd like to do is just very briefly touch on the fact that we continue to have to do is just very briefly touch on the fact that we continue to have a slew of VIP visitors in here in our labs to work with us to brainstorm, to help us create the content and flow for the Impact Conference for their own strategic planning. And this week, we've got the leadership from Polo Ralph Lauren. Very excited to have them in the labs. Yesterday, we had leaders from different, from at home, from TJX, from public supermarkets, from Bloomingdale's, from also from the Topps Market, we'll call them Northeastern Grocers, and going through what we can and should do for impact with our, you impact, as well as our research strategy and how they might use it. So it continues. Many, many more retailers coming through, and our team is continuing to move around.

We've got Diego himself going out to the Access Annual Leadership Conference, hosted this year by Google. We're excited to interact with that stellar group of retailers and solution partners and continue some strategic talks on mutual support so that we can do the good work and reduce crime and loss. So we're also excited. We got to yesterday additionally participate in a few different things. One was back out to the Santa Fe College, in this case, North Central Florida's Public Safety Institute, where a crew of our advisors for impact and some of our LPRC team went through some training with high-speed types of VR and wall projections with digital firearms and other weapons to understand escalation, de-escalation, what's driving this, how to handle it, and get the law enforcement officer's perspective in that case. We also had a meeting and tour with the University of Florida Police Department, their brand-new complex. Now their dispatch and real-time crime center is up and running. We looked at some of their spaces for

future meetings for strategy ad and other LPRC initiatives for our members, in addition to the Public Safety Institute. So two close-by, amazing places to work with LPRC in addition to our six labs, indoor and outdoor as well. So what we're also doing, we went to a demonstration as well at the Swamp, the UF football complex with Serverly. And I think it was representatives from seven local law enforcement agencies went through some tech demonstrations with tethered drones, different types of night scope cameras, from tiny ones to a little bit larger, to understand what technologies are capable of doing and how to work with them. And I guess in

some cases, some of these agencies will be acquiring them. We also were involved this week in a Reduce the Gun Violence Gainesville initiative headed by Gainesville's Mayor Harvey Ward. And that's where you saw an entire ballroom filled with all the local law enforcement agencies, fire rescue executives, and then different groups that help work with people that are in trouble, victims, work with offenders. There was just a nice, large mix. There were legislators of a different strata and so on working through a strategy for reducing gun violence. And so LPRC, we got our say in the University of Florida Safe for Places Lab that I lead in some thoughts that we had, how we might support with all types of interactive mapping provided by ESRI, the ESRI team. And so now as a result of this, we're going to have some more Alachua County Sheriff's Office officials come and do a home and home.

We're going to have the University of Florida Athletic Association's director of security the same. We'll have the mayor and some of the top city executives come in. We've already had at least one city commissioner come through. So we're proud and excited to support local as well as national initiatives. And the LPRC Eastside Initiative, which we've talked a lot about on this podcast and elsewhere, will play a pivotal role in the fact that a university and the LPRC, which is actually international, are conducting so much of the groundwork type research and development here. And Gainesville, of course, can accrue to

the benefit of the local citizens in helping create a safer community. So a lot happening. Again, I mentioned everybody aiming toward the October 2nd through 4th LPRC Impact 2023 version. We went through an amazing array of anti-theft, fraud, and violence content from our growing research team. We're adding another member to

the team. Believe it or not, we continue to grow. A young man, Caleb, who is just finishing his PhD in computer engineering and sciences. So we're excited to add that skill set to Sam and his cognitive psychology expertise as a PhD, in addition to our criminology experts here and geography experts. So you can see LPRC, we're trying to grow the team, do it very purposely, very methodically with the right people to have the right capabilities, the right character and the right compatibility to work on a high speed team and create that positive, friendly, even fun environment while we're really working hard together to help make people in places a lot safer. So with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, if you would, take it away. Thank you very much, Reid, for all those great updates.

I have the great pleasure today of having a guest, and it is a special guest. It's an individual that I've known for a long time. He's really a leader in this industry, and it's a pleasure to have him here. So it's my pleasure to welcome Tom Arrigi. Tom, welcome. Thank you, Tony. It's great to see you and great to be here. Tell me a little bit about your background and how you came into asset protection. And just give the listeners a little bit of that in terms of background. Yeah, look, that's kind of a loaded question. As long as I've been around these days, that used to be a pretty easy and short question.

But I'll give you a high level overview, Tony. But what really drew me to the profession was an early interest in law enforcement. And while I was living in Chicago suburbs, I thought probably would be good to get some practical experience while I was testing at police departments and going to school. And there was a suburb and a mall out in Oak Brook, Illinois, and it had all the major anchors, Marshall Fields at the time, Saks Fifth Avenue, and there was a Sears there as well. So I made the circuit around the anchors just applying for, Tony, what was back then the security department, known today either as loss prevention or asset protection, and ended up working for

Sears. And I remember the first time I walked into that security office, Sensormatic was putting in their latest, greatest CCTV system. This must have been 100 monitors, nine-inch monitors stacked on top of each other with a joystick. And I was just amazed. I had no idea that in a store like that, there was a surveillance capabilities and even more naive on my part that people would steal from the store. So I was instantly hooked when I saw that technology

and saw what was going on. And really I spent 28 years at Sears. It was a great organization. I worked with great individuals that taught me an awful lot. I started out part-time catching shoplifters, moved to my own store as a security manager, and then it was, you know, every couple years I was getting a tap on the shoulder to go do something different, and the diversity of things that Sears offered. something different. And the diversity of things that Sears offered, I got into operations for a while. I was a store manager. I was a district operations manager. I got back into asset protection. And when I left, to make a really long story short, I was the DVP of Kmart after Sears and Kmart merged. And candidly, truth be known, I was a little bit worried about the viability of the business. And I got a great opportunity to move out to LA and work for a

company called National Studios, where I was their DDP of loss prevention. Then I got an opportunity to move over to Walmart. I spent about five years at Walmart, great organization, great AP organization there, learned a ton about an amazing business model, and worked for Mike Lamb there. And when Mike went over to Kroger, shortly after he got there, he and I started talking about an opportunity at Kroger. I moved over to Kroger, spent about, I don't know, maybe three and a half years, off the top of my head over at Kroger.

And then I had this great opportunity to move over to America, to American Freight. And I've been over at American Freight for about 18 years. I mean, I'm sorry, 18 months. A little Freudian slip. No, about 18 months. And so, but it's been a great opportunity. I'm having a lot of fun here and probably a long-winded answer, Tony, which should be an easy answer. No, that's an excellent overview.

And really, it really speaks to the leadership roles that you've taken. And you crossed quite a few milestones. What drives you as a leader? What motivates you as a leader? Well, you know, Tony, that's an interesting question because, you know, as I think about that, I think I was motivated by different things at different parts of my career. And look, when I walked into that Oprah store, my motivation was to be the one that caught the most shoplifters and had the best cases. And then I had a ball doing that. And then as I gained responsibility and especially had responsibility for team members that worked with me, I think my

motivation changed, right? Which is there was always that competitiveness about getting results. But I also learned along the way that if you don't have the right team with you focused on the right on the right things you won't get those results and you won't get those different career opportunities as well and so hopefully along the way the motivation around people and making sure you understand what you know their career goals are helping them get there um that's the biggest motivation for me at this point, which is how do you build a team centered around the things that are important that the organization expects you to get done? And while you're doing that, allow for people to grow because everybody defines success differently, I think, Tony. And so understanding how individuals on your team

define success and then helping them achieve that success. And especially as, you know, as people define their success, hopefully, like it'd be nirvana for me, Tony, if one day somebody looked back and said, you know, I got to work with Tom for a while and I learned a lot from him or that made a difference. If I could achieve that now, I think that would be perfect for me. That's an excellent answer. And I've seen it in you. I've had the pleasure, as you know, to spend a lot of time with you in different formats. And I've seen it in you in terms of your leadership style and what you're able to do and how you're able to motivate people

in your career. Have there been any mentors that have stood out? And what lessons did you take from them in terms of when you met them and what they taught you? Yeah, it's interesting that I've had the very, very lucky over my entire career to either work for, and I know that's not technically a definition of mentor, but work for great leaders and or have people take interest in me from and able to mentor me. and or have people take interest in me from and able to mentor me um critically important and so what i've learned from the managers i've worked for um you know in some cases you learn what to do and what you want to emulate and in some cases you learn what not to do too right um and so i think it's always important to kind of be on the lookout for both things, things you want to model and things that you're like, that one, that one doesn't, that, that style doesn't resonate so much for me. But look early on in my career, that first manager,

Jerry Vanderplot was his name. And that first manager I worked for, he instilled a lot of confidence in me because he, you know, like if he was, if he was taking a vacation, he'd say, hey, Tom, you know, you're running the department for me. And as interesting as this sounds, I don't know, I was probably 21, maybe 20 when I started there. But at one point he was, he took a vacation. He said, Tom, go to the staff meeting for me and update the team on what we're working. And that was a big deal at 20 and 21 years old to go to a staff meeting for me and update the team on what we're working. And that was a big deal at 20 and 21 years old to go to a staff meeting. Now, today we go to meetings and we're all rolling our eyes. But, you know, I'm always interested in that new leader that's maybe new to coming to a

meeting and how excited they are to be there. And it's important to keep that momentum and that excitement alive in those new leaders. Sometimes we take that for granted. But don't even be hard for me because I've got so many individuals that I work for that taught me a lot. Jim Lee was a great mentor of mine. When I went out to national stores, he offered to come out, take a look at what I was working on, and give me some feedback. I look back at that, and I value that. Actually, you, Tony, when you came out to Walmart, and you and I got a chance to kind of walk some of the technology we're deploying, getting your feedback.

So you never know where you're going to get, where you're going to find a mentor. You never know where you're going to pick up a great tidbit on leadership. And I think the key is you'll find great inspiration anywhere. Like sometimes it's somebody, you know, completely outside of the AP arena that you might not even think has any experience that might be able to help you. And they provide such insight. And just being attuned to picking that insight up and being able to leverage it, really, really important. No, again, that's an excellent answer. And from my perspective, it's exactly that. I actually worked for nine years in a supermarket in high school and in college.

And when they started telling me, yeah, you can run that department, you can run that department, just the sense that they trusted me and that responsibility really motivates you to do a lot more. But let me, this is actually an all loss prevention research council.

So let's talk a little bit about technology and where do you see technology today? What's technology doing? Are we there yet in terms of loss prevention? What's your thinking on technology these days? Yeah, look, I'm a bit of a technology buff. And I'm not the engineer that figures out how to make it work. But I'm amazed that when you look to solution providers

and say here's my problem do you think you can help me um there are some that do a really really good job of that and there's some that will kind of brush that off and say no no we don't really do that and to me the those solution providers that have an open to listen and then have a desire to go and crack the code, so to speak, they're game changers. And so technology, in my mind, is a huge priority within retail overall. And really where I learned a lot about how important technology and the role technology plays in retail and in asset protection is when I was at Walmart. And we reported to an individual, Mark Ibbotson. And what I loved about Mark's leadership style was he basically would say, if you're not searching out technology, if you're not bringing new ideas and new thought processes about how technology can help us, then you're probably not doing your job. And that was inspiring.

I mean, he had an open to listen and not everything he brought to bear was adopted. But that open to listen opened up a lot of doors to different thought process. And so I think it's absolutely critical in the retail arena alone. One thing we don't we know for sure is store payroll is hard to come by. And so technology can play a role. And you saw that at Walmart, where they're trying to figure out how you get rid of those mundane tasks and free up payroll to help customers, I think is critically important. And then in the AP world as well, Tony, you know, technology is moving at such a fast pace. If you're not either trying to innovate with those solution providers or seek out what's available, you're probably missing the boat.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think we are moving at a speed. But I do think right now with all the issues that the retail industry is facing, we do need to do a lot more. Any technology stand out to you more than others today? Yeah, for sure. I think there's a couple of them that come to mind. I think the biggest game changer we're seeing right now is what the industry started calling facial recognition. That scares a lot of people. And there's a lot of misunderstanding about that technology. But being able to face match a person that you've identified as a bad person, robbed a service desk or an ORC hit or those types of things. Even some of the stories I'm reading about around face matching, where you catch a bad guy who's

shoplifting, but then again, he's in his car with some child that was abducted. And there's human traffic. I mean, there's all these connections that really inspire me to say, man, that technology is just coming to bear now. And it matches so well with some of the concerns from a safety standpoint and how you thwart some of some of these bad actors. That one stands out to me for sure. There's a, there's a company out there I met with a while back that they were talking to me about cloud video retention. And, but this is one of these solution providers that had opened the list.

And I said, look, and I was at Walmart at the time. I said, look, I don't know that we're really interested in that. I said, but, man, if you can get a camera to detect a spill on the floor and then have that camera alert and then people learning until it's cleaned up, I said, no, that's a game changer. And that technology is starting to come to bear now. And I think that's a game changer because look at whether it's life safety because of a bad guy, or I think about both of my parents are in their nineties. If they're in a store and

they slip and fall on water, that's a game changer for them. So protecting your customers and associates from those types of hazards is just as important as, you know, some of the more prevalent uses of technology around face matching. And then I'm hopeful, Tony, that RFID becomes more than what it's been a long journey. A lot of people have I think about Macy's, how they've been able to leverage that technology and really make it work um i'm hopeful i think there's even in my space today i think there's room and there's a an application that rf rfid technology can help with us on our what we call out of carton appliances or scratch and dent, maybe a lot of folks refer to it more as. But I even think hopefully that technology is starting to come into its own and not be

so cost prohibitive that people can't deploy it. Those are the top three I think that come to mind. No, and you picked the excellent top three. Those are excellent top three. And I agree with you in terms of the capability. But as you know, the Loss Prevention Council, you've been extremely active with it. What are your thoughts on the Loss Prevention Research Council before I ask you my final question? In general, what do you think about the Loss Prevention Research Council and what they're doing? Look, I'm very fortunate because during

my time at Sears, Bill Titus had a very active role with Reed and the connection with the Loss Prevention Research Council. And so for a long time, I've been a big supporter of and seen it play out and leverage the Loss Prevention Research Council in this kind of evidence-based research, right? And so there's a lot of times where as the subject matter expert in an organization, certainly the senior leadership team would expect that you know

what you're talking about. But it is always nice, Tony, to have in your hip pocket, oh, by the way, it's not just what I think. Here's a white paper from the Loss Prevention Research Council and their findings based on this technology or this deterrent application. And it just puts an extra layer of, OK, let's move forward. I think that's critically important. Some of the things we're doing in Innovate, like, look, I've had to step away for a little bit. I'm excited about getting back engaged with the Loss Prevention Research Council in my new role at American Freight. But some of the things that we're going on in Innovate I think are fantastic. You know, when you get a lot of smart people together, both those that are part of the Loss Prevention council and those that are are working in the

industry working in retail stores every day and then those that are solution providers that have an interest in really really helping that's a that's a a game changer that's a force multiplier those three elements coming together i've seen it over and over again and like i said we've uh we've just re-engaged with the law spirit i've just just reengaged with the law. I've just reengaged with the law presidential research council in my new role. And I can't wait to get back. I told Reed, it feels good to be back in the family again after a short hiatus. Well, that's an excellent way to end this version of the podcast. Really great input from you, really appreciate all your thoughts. You are a true leader in this industry.

It's really a pleasure to work with you across so many different spectrums and to follow your career and to choose your career. So thank you very much, Tom, for joining us. Tony, thank you so much. It was good catching up. All right. Thanks so much, Tom and Tony. Thanks so much, Diego and Wilson. A whole lot of content. A lot much, Tom and Tony. Thanks so much, Diego and Wilson. A whole lot of content,

a lot of actionable items here today. And I want to thank each and every one of you out there that are listening. Please pass it on. As you hear on other podcasts, like us, recommend us, rate us, but let us know what we can do to create better content, a better process for you to take to work. So stay safe, stay in touch. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council. 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.