LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 189

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

This week our hosts discuss some of the newest and latest trends, technology, and LPRC news! In this episode, our hosts discuss the latest in our Detect and Connect Programs, a discussion of the CrowdStrike Windows Outage, a look at a recent report from Avery Dennison, a conversation on the US Election updates, and a look at the creative ways masks are being used since Covid-19. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more!

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 colleagues Tony D'Offrio and Tom Meehan and our producer Diego Rodriguez. And I'm joined by colleagues Tony D'Offrio and Tom Meehan and our producer Diego Rodriguez. And I'm outside. We've just finished up some more meetings. We've had an exciting week yet again.

And here we are just Wednesday morning. And we had Motorola Solutions in the lab, some of the top leaders for the U.S. and around the globe, focusing on the entire suite of Motorola offerings to law enforcement and to loss prevention, asset protection professionals. So the public-private focus of the LPRC is my understanding the big reason that so many of these organizations are stepping up and stepping in, joining the LPRC community to work with 98 retail corporations and another 130, I believe now eight solution partner organizations, retail associations and beyond. And everybody understanding that crime that occurs at a place, crime attempts, events,

don't start there. They start somewhere else. Individual lives, works, travels, visits that community, that neighborhood, that block, that block segment in that place. So that means everybody needs to be on heads up, working together on solutions and so forth. You know, I think that the the frameworks and models that the LPRC is very, very carefully cultivated over the last 24 years. How an offender moves through time and place through the we just describe as the five zones from public to private, from exterior to interior. And once in the interior, moving up to that target, that individual, that money, that property, that merchandise, and then victimizes.

And then moves on from there unless somehow caught or otherwise. So that part seems to be very helpful. And we hear that day in and day out from retailers, law enforcement, solution partners, and others. And the idea of expanding that, extending that, and better articulating or describing what do we mean? What do we mean? How do we do this? Well, that's where the affect DTECH Connect, of course, come in. We talk about that a lot on this podcast, but trying to affect offender choices by changing the opportunity structures, what they hear, what they notice or see, what they come up against. That's our role. Any guardian of any person or place is to change those opportunity structures

to make it more difficult, to make it riskier, to make it less rewarding or profitable or beneficial for the offender. That's our challenge. That's our goal on the effect side. So I think that, excuse me, the retailers that are streaming through here and working with us, as well working with solution partners that offer choices like CapIndex and BetterData, as well as the retailer, law enforcement, other data that we're able to acquire now is key to this. And doing the trialing and testing in the labs in the Innovation Square four block area out in the community in Port St. Lucie and Gainesville, Albuquerque, Atlanta and beyond.

So that's what's critical. The DTECH side, very beneficial for these organizations and helping work on the strategy and the execution, the operational part, as well as the tactics that are supposed to be carried out on the DTEK side, as well as UFFACT. And in the case of Motorola solutions, having sensors like body-worn cameras of different types and capabilities, two-way radios that transmit and connect, LPRs distributed out in the community in a fixed way or mobile, the connection software and platforms that they've got that law enforcement broadly uses that can be used to tie together law enforcement agencies and law enforcement agencies with retailers. And then leveraging

some of the other platforms like Aura, some of the things that ThinkLP and APRIS and many others are working on bringing these technologies and information and ideas together. That's been the goal. So that was really going through strategy and opportunities with Motorola Solution the same way we've done with so many others and have so many others coming up. We've got a call today with a coalition of solution partners that their technology generate different types of signals and APIs and so on to look at how we might do R&D with that coalition of SPs, leveraging in the labs first and moving into store areas, into into the field and trying to figure out

better and better ways to integrate all this for effect to get the right people the right time have and learn how to better validate the trustworthiness the accuracy the urgency so it can be prioritized and all these types of things, right? So we're working on a sensor tree. We'll talk about that later. We will upcoming have two sensor trees, which we'll talk about and describe. So many, many meetings we've got this week. Mike Lamb, as we all know, formerly VP at the Home Depot at Walmart and at Kroger Company in asset protection, two tours of duty at the Kroger Company. Mike coming up as our chief advisor, our senior advisor for the LPRC Innovate program. Also accompanying him, Tom Riggi, the VP at American Freight.

And Tom and I also, like Mike, go way back. Those are just two guys that really get it and really get it done. And that's our kind of byword around here at the LPRC is we're always looking to build our team with people that truly get it and really are able to get it done. And the same thing with those that we work with and partner with. So Mike and Tom coming in to whiteboard and plan and tighten down our strategy for the Innovate program. We've got an Innovate advisory board. As everybody knows, a panel. There are four leaders, an SP and a retailer leader for overall Innovate to help advise us and coordinate.

and a retailer leader for overall innovate to help advise us and coordinate. And then the same, a retailer and an SP member over the specific projects that we work on to help us coordinate and get the best advice and participation, cooperation, partnership that we need. It doesn't work if we've got 98 retailers and only one or two or 10 or even 20 participate. We need everybody. So that's part of their roles to help make sure that everybody's got the best information, understands what we're trying to do and how, what the retailer's role could be and how we can facilitate confidentiality, but also powerful learning. So as they come in, they help us strategize how we're going to

continue to tighten up and continue to execute. The Innovate program, it really is where we coordinate our most powerful design, our research and development program. the one that coordinates and helps us strategize, envision, drive, execute, and learn from the big field projects across the ecoscape of labs and lab areas, test areas, test and learn areas that we've got. Innovate program also helps us envision and operate FusionNet, where we fuse retailers together online. Right now, we've been using, since 2020, the Discord platform to share ideas, to share intelligence and information between retailers before, during, and after significant events. And the group has bravely ridden through all the storms of 2020, 2021, two, three, and four so far from the obviously the pandemic to everything else. So what we're going to be doing is coordinating and continuing to build out that FusionNet program. And then finally, the Integrate program, right, where we have now conducted two Integrate projects, one again on a heavy-duty ORC theft and then turned into a

robbery scenario. And then this past one in February was an active shooter event. So, we already are in planning for 2025 Integrate for next February, February of 2025. So a lot going on around here. It's exciting to go into the research area and see the center tree and other things happening, to see all the interns from University of Florida and working on things that we're doing in Zone 5 online, things that we're doing to put together our four breakdowns of active shooter events, going in the other activation lab and seeing what we're doing with that covert camera setup to record all kinds of information for study out in the wild. The robots, the servers, all new technologies being bolted in, all the labs.

We're over 400 technologies now. So just a lot going on around LPRC. And we invite each and every one of you go to our website, watch us on Twitter and LinkedIn, of course, plan a visit in here and plan to participate in our webinars, our events. It's just an exciting place to be, and we all have a whole lot to do, so we need to roll up our sleeves together. I'm going to turn it over to Tony and Tom. Let me start this week with some new research from Avery Dennison published in Chain Storage. As Chain Storage writes, a large number of retailer leaders believe that theft continues to remain on the rise and are taking steps to combat it. United Kingdom and the United States agree that the impact of theft has reached a crisis point, according to a research commission by Avery Dennison and conducted by Opinion Matters. 42% of the 300 senior retail leaders representing brands, with more than 200 stores

who were surveyed, believe that theft is more of a concern today than it was 12 months ago. In response, retail leaders said they are fighting back with a combination of anti-theft and loss prevention measures. Over half, or 53%, say 3-4% of their total IT budget is allocated to detailed theft detection and prevention, IT budget is allocated to detail theft detection and prevention, while almost a quarter, or 23%, are allocating 5-6% of their total IT spend. For 57% of the retail leaders surveyed, these budgets equate to an increase in spend over the last two years. But a third, or 33 percent still believe the resources allocated are insufficient respondents listed security guards 27% as the most

effective measure deployed to date followed by facial recognition technology 23 percent and RFID tags 21 percent%. Looking ahead, 76% of retailers said they are using RFID or plan to begin doing so within the next 24 months. Over a third, or 38%, plan to deploy AI-enabled cameras, while 37% will introduce facial recognition technology within the same period. Interesting this new research and a lot of this is what we talked a lot about here at the Loss Prevention Research Council so it's good to see the reinforcing research that the technology focus we have here is needed more than ever. Changing topics let me go to the Wall Street Journal on an interesting new

take on masks in retail stores. As the Wall Street Journal writes, masks are creating controversies for businesses, but this time it is for a different reason. Early in the pandemic, retailers faced backlash for mandating face coverings now some store owners are demanding customers drop their masks police and some small business owners say people are exploiting the culture acceptance of masks established by COVID-19 to commit robberies while hiding their faces. In response, some stores and business organizations are calling out for bans on face coverings or on imposing them on their own. The move comes as state and local governments take steps to

enforce mask restrictions. North Carolina last month passed a law increasing penalties for wearing a mask while committing a crime, largely in response to pro-Palestinian protesters who covered their faces during demonstrations. After last month, New York Governor Kathy Koko said that she supported a mask ban in the New York City subway, a policy pushed for by Jewish leaders in the city. Diamond Collect, an independent jewelry store in Flushing, New York, instituted a mass ban last year after it was robbed by two men, both of whom were masked upon entering. men, both of whom were masked upon entering. Owner Eva Chen, whose mother was attacked during the robbery, said she now won't allow anyone with a mask to enter the store. Critics say that bans jeopardize the health of immunocompromised people, violate civil liberties, and foster discriminatory enforcement.

People wear masks for such a broad variety of purposes that criminalizing masks threatens to stop people from wearing masks for various legitimate reasons or create the possibility of selective enforcement, said Jane Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. Philadelphia last year imposed a restriction on key masks, saying that they were being used to commit crime anonymously. Jabari Jones said the ban didn't go far enough. Jones, president of the West Philadelphia Corridor Collaborative, a business association, said that the ban applies only in public spaces, doesn't encompass other types of masks, and isn't being effectively enforced. As a result, some stores are locking up their doors

or denying entry to anyone wearing some type of covering. Jovan Bernal, owner of the novelty shop in a retroverse in Colta, California, said he supports a legal ban on all face masks. The shop has been robbed three times since November. He said he and his partner have considered instituting a no-mask policy themselves, but concluded it wouldn't be effective because people could claim to be wearing masks for health reasons. After the Diamond Collect robbery in New York, police department told business to ask customers to lower their

masks temporarily and show their faces before entering the store. In January, the police in Scotland Neck, a small town in North Carolina, told business to not let anyone in wearing hoodies or face covering. If you know who it is, we probably want the guidance read. A Kitson, a retail chain in Los Angeles area that claims a long list of celebrities as customers, became one of the first stores to restrict masks in the pandemic area when it imposed a ban in 2022 on its flagship store. Owner Fraser Ross said the policy has been enormously effective at reducing shoplifting. It's like night and day, he said. Some of the businesses that impose or support mask bans don't allow for any health exceptions for immunocompromised people

who account, and this was surprising, for 6.5 percent of U.S. adults, according to a recent study published by the American Medical Association. Fernando Mateo, co-founder of the United Bodegas of America, said the organization tells its members not to let anyone wearing a mask enter their stores. He said he supported an exemption for elderly people, but not for anyone else criminals will take advantage of any loopholes he said kitson also immunocompromised people allows immunocompromised people to enter the store with a mask for a period before or a regular after hours but not during the rules are for everyone ross said you never know who the shoplifter are. Some say not allowing immunocompromised people to enter stores with a mask could violate the

American with Disabilities Act. Steve Miller, who frequently represents businesses in ADA lawsuits as a partner at the law firm Fisher Phillips, said business have to provide equal access. To enforce a mask ban without offering exemptions to immunocompromised people, business would have to prove that such exemptions would cause undue burden, Miller said. Disability advocates say anti-mask policies that include health exemptions could still contribute to mistreatment of mask wearers. The day after the North Carolina bill passed, Sherry Stewart, who has stage 4 breast cancer and is immunocompromised, was confronted by another customer in an oil change center near Raleigh for wearing a mask.

The man told her that the mask was illegal, repeatedly coughed on her, and said he hoped that the cancer would kill her. The North Carolina bill does have a health exemption. Stewart told the Wall Street Journal she has been encountering more hostility for wearing a mask since the mask bill was introduced. We're in the middle of this political battle when it's just a health issue, said Stewart. So interesting take from the Wall Street Journal in terms of masks and what they do in terms of shoplifting, but also what we need to do to also make sure we have exemptions potentially for immunocompromised individuals. So that's it for this week. Let me now turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Tony. And thank you, Reid. And wow, it's been a wild last couple of weeks.

Last couple of weeks, we've had a tempted assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden has dropped out of the race, and it looks like Kamala Harris will be in the race. And there's just a tremendous amount going on. And I wanted to talk really about the implications of artificial intelligence on all of this. We talk about artificial intelligence all the time, but the conspiracy theories, I would argue, are in a place that you might never have seen them before and this is something I talk about all the time with artificial intelligence. As we talk about the benefits of artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence you know as we talk about the benefits of artificial intelligence we also need to identify and understand the risks of artificial intelligence and one of the risks of artificial intelligence is the use of deep fakes and what a deep fake is is a video deep fake is

an artificially intelligented intelligence generated video where a person looks like they're saying something and they're not or a deep fake with voices where your artificial intelligence is mimicking someone's voice to make it sound like them and in the past week I've seen more accusations of deep fakes related to some of the announcements by Joe Biden and others. And this poses a significant risk to risk professionals because before, in the past, prior to generative AI and prior to some of the things that we're seeing with AI, you could be pretty certain if you heard something or saw something that it was accurate. And now today, even when it is outlandish, there is an implied and usually is enhanced by confirmation bias is that, hey, that could be a deep fake. That might

not be the president talking. That might not be his voice. That might not be his video. not be his voice that might not be his video this in for a risk professional really poses an interesting dynamic of imagine a day when you're doing an interview and you have to wonder if the video evidence is real or not you have to wonder if when you're prosecuting a case that that will come up as a defense there's already been a case, you know, an actual case where a defendant who confessed to murder changed his plea and said that the confession was not him and that it was artificial intelligence and it was a deep fake. And while that may sound outlandish, it causes doubt. It causes doubt in the jury.

It causes doubt in the system. And it implies or adds a layer of complexity that we've not seen before, as well as some of the information being provided about some of the recent events, whether it be the attempted assassination or Joe Biden's stepping away from the nominee, this information can be manipulated by AI in real time and made to look like it's valid. So we're in this quasi space that we've never been in before. We've never been in a position where you now need to say huh even though I see that I am going to question it so wanted to start with this because I've never seen the amount of information being discriminated through the open web that looks very authentic but has to be validated and questioned and sometimes just outright dismissed

by saying although i can't validate this is right or wrong it's so outlandish that i'm going to ignore it this is a dangerous dangerous place to be in when you're in a risk world because you now have to second guess everything that is occurring. There was a report yesterday and the day before it's coming out. It's a little bit tricky because the FBI is increasingly concerned about terrorists crossing the southern border. This is what the director tells Congress. Now, there's not a heck of a lot of information about this. If you remember, back in April, there was a similar warning that went out. And now you have this warning coming again, and then you have to ask the question of, okay, what does that mean for everybody?

I'd also say that there is a warning in November of 23. So this is now, I think, the third time where we've seen a warning that states, hey, we're increasingly concerned. However, there isn't specific information so we are entering a time that I would say is probably the most geopolitically volatile in modern history with conflict all over the world as well as a very very polarizing cycle. So we need to be prepared for civil disturbance and disruption like we haven't seen before.

Now, what I would say to that is, I'm not suggesting that we pack up and give up and assume that it is going to be unmanageable. What I am suggesting is that you start to plan now here at the LPRC I say this quite often if you're not involved in this fusion that get involved it's a great place to learn about this and you'll really really be able to get information and relative real-time and share it. Switching gears a little bit to what was the largest incident, I would say technical incident on record that I could find is if you do anything, you probably are aware that

there was a CrowdStrike incident where there was a patch that had a bug in it, and it went out and it predominantly affected Microsoft-based computers. And this made international news. And not only did it make international news, it also affected air travel all over the world. The blue screen of death, which is the window screen that we're all familiar with, that the system just crashes. I myself, and along with many of the people we talked to, were faced with massive flight delays

and cancellations of magnitude that I have not seen in many, many years. I would argue that the cancellations, the flight disruption were more than any event that I can recall, except for September 11th, when all flights were grounded. It was mayhem systems, It was mayhem systems. Companies could not process payments throughout the world. And this was all stems on CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that provides intrusion detection and breach detection and some cybersecurity features. They're very, very well known and they are, excuse me, one of the largest. I think that when we look at this immediately, it was, this has to be an attack. One thing I will say that CrowdStrike did well is they immediately came out and said,

here's what we believe happened. Windows computers around the world suffered a major challenge because CrowdStrike as a cybersecurity tool has the ability to change things. And even if you had backups, you had real, real challenges. I use the Delta Airline example as I flew Deltas.

Their scheduling system was not available, so they had to cancel upward of 3,000 flights and there were several hundred delayed and it really, really challenged a whole bunch of different things. What I would say here is that security experts talk about one of the easy fixes here is a staggered rollout of an update or a patch. The reality here is, yes, that's definitely an easy

to say after the fact, but this is unfortunately one of those events that really shows how reliant we are on technology, how reliant as human beings, how reliant as businesses. And I was at an airport and talking to a pilot that said, hey, we were in some cases in some countries back to paper boarding passes that had handwriting on them. And what he said was a lot of people had never seen that, did not know how to manage that, and it created confusion amongst the people that both work for the airlines and the customer base.

And what I would also say is that the reliance on technology for the individuals has a heightened level of stress. You know, you're stuck at the airport with your kids. You go to buy a cup of coffee and you find out that they can't process a credit card payment. You don't have cash. You go to an ATM, the ATM doesn't work. And all of these things in sync happen. And it really, really, really pushes the importance of having a plan.

I talk about this all the time. Depending on what your job is and what you do, you may need to have more than one device with you. I carry two phones with two different carriers. I always carry cash. You may argue, well, not a lot of people use cash. I understand that, but you know, having that 20 to $50 with you in your wallet allows you to know that, Hey, if credit cards

are down, I'm going to be able to eat, I'm going to be able to buy something. And what reminded me of is when the AT&T outage occurred, I was actually getting on a plane and landed in Chicago and had no cell phone service, which means I couldn't get an Uber, which means I couldn't do all these things. And I saw people that didn't have a plan. It's easy to say this, right? That were just devastated with, I can't do anything. I have no means to communicate. I have no means to pay for anything. I use my phone for everything. In this scenario, it was a little bit more catastrophic because you had third party organizations not being able to process payments, not being able to look things up.

Almost all of the airlines were affected. I couldn't buy a ticket for several days. I actually was at an airport for 14 hours and it was delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, and arguably delayed to the next day instead of canceling a flight. And while those are normal things that happen when you travel, when you have organizations of that size not having availability, it does really create a challenge. It also really shows just how globally susceptible we are to it. The reality here was this was an update with a bug that

caused a catastrophic event. That's what it was. Again, back to the conspiracy theories, it ends up creating the feeling or the ambience, there is more to it. This could be something else. And again, that really does create havoc on everything that occurs in what we do from air travel to buying things. And, you know, what I would say to everybody here is, again, just have a plan so that you are prepared for that. Because what inevitably will continue to happen as we become more reliant on technology is these events will occur more and more. Lots of interesting stuff here. I wish everyone a happy and safe weekend. and we will be back with you next week.

Over to you, Reid. Well, thanks so much, Tony. Thanks so much, Tom. Thanks so much, guys. That was excellent information, as always. I want to reach out and tell you all, please let us know. Go to operations at lpresearch.org. Let us know anything we can do to improve new ideas and we are as we said and we keep saying

retooling via the podcast we're we're putting out also excellent vintage of you know almost 130 or plus episodes some of those vintage episodes that are criminologists that are practitioners that are others great information on some of the older pluses. So stay safe and 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.