LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 210

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

In this episode of the LPRC CrimeScience Podcast, Dr. Read Hayes shares the amazing things that the LPRC team is currently working on. This includes the development process of a new LP Museum and a brief history of the different industry organizations!

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 from the LPRC and from the University of Florida. And this is Dr. Reed Hayes, just giving you a quick summary of where we are and what we're up to. We have revamped crime science podcast to include briefings with our team members,

the researchers and operations people, with colleagues and partners that we're conducting research with and for criminologists as we've done in the past, other practitioners, including law enforcement. So we're excited about it. You may have seen a few coming out here and there. As you can see, we've revamped a little bit

and we're testing a few new processes. We leveraged the Blueberry process, a platform to place our podcasts on just about every recognizable podcast platform out there so to get the widest distribution. And it's our understanding that our listenership averages roughly 1,500 per week individuals. So that's pretty exciting given the small size of our relatively small size of our field. And also the fact that since crime science started a few years ago and over 200 episodes ago, there's now a lot more podcasts available out there that compete for all of our very, very precious and short times that we've got each day and week. So we're excited for those that are listening to us. Please reach out, give us suggestions at operations at lpresearch.org.

Let me go through a few news items. One, at the behest of several retailers, the LPRC has started down the path of putting together an LPAP Museum, a Loss Prevention Asset Protection Museum. It's a field that's not been completely defined by any kind of historic museum that we're aware of, but there's been some things that started happening at the turn of the 21st century and around 2000, LPRC was founded in 2000, the end of 2000, bleeding into 2001. It was about a year or

so later that LP or Loss Prevention Magazine started and shortly thereafter the Loss Prevention Foundation. So they were three, I think, pretty significant events and then now we had a research organization. We had a magazine, an instrument for us to communicate and rally and round and learn from and share ideas, but just an anchor point from that type of, from that standpoint. And then with the foundation, a way of starting to pull together information and ideas and practices, protocols, and training and so on so that we could come up with some standardized certifications at the roughly entry level,

let's say very early career level, and then at the, let's say mid-career, starting to be a manager leader executive level as well with the LPQ and then LPC. Very exciting to have those later, Downing and Downing. Gus Downing and team started the D&D daily to get information and ideas out there, a lot of news, a summary that is quick.

Maybe not so quick sometimes because it's very lengthy and very exhaustive, but it allows those that want to have a cursory look to look at things and then those that want a more in-depth look. LP Magazine changed from Lost Prevention Magazine. I can remember back in the day, Jack saying, we'll never change to LP Magazine jokingly, and they did because everybody referred to Lost Prevention Magazine as LP Magazine. But they came out with a newsletter too. Now at the same time, you saw the organizations like the NMRI, National Mass Retailers Institute,

who then changed their name to IMRA or the International Mass Retailers Association, and then changed their name to RILA, the Retail Industry Leaders Association. They had started started loss prevention conferences in the 90s and in 2000s till now, of course. And then of course, the National Retail Federation, which had earlier been the the National Retail Merchants Association in NRMA,

and they merged with ARF, the American Retail Federation, which was the confederation of all the state retail associations to come together and form the NRF. And of course, their annual conference that they put on for loss prevention started to include cyber security, changed their name and branded it as NRF Protect. And that of course, conference continues today

as does RELA and AP and so on. We had the Food Marketing Institute. I can remember Chuck back in the day having a loss prevention function there putting out a how-to manual, NARM, the National Association of Retail Merchants and so on. We've got some of these, by the way, that we're curating for the museum. So what we're doing is reaching out, talking to individuals. We're getting photos, old badges, handcuffs, training videos, and anything and everything, items and memories

that can help us tell the story of those that have been protecting stores, people, the products, the merchandise, the other assets, the brand at the different strata in the supply chains, the distribution centers, the warehouses, as we used to call them back in the day, as well as everything else, the other assets, from executive protection to the buildings

and the infrastructure that they've got, since they do have DCs or fulfillment centers, they've got corporate and regional offices and things like that. So it's a wide variety of things that happen from a criminal standpoint to retail organizations and loss prevention was stood up to protect those assets and to enable the organization and the people to continue and onward with their mission to serve customers in the different markets that they serve.

So we want to honor that. We want to look at the transition from security to laws prevention. And in some cases, if not many, and maybe even most cases too, using the term asset protection, some have used profit protection. You might hear resource protection, particularly north of the border

in Canada. So that's really where we are right now. We've had multiple people start to send in items and memories and photos. We have a University of Florida graduate student coming out of the School of Architecture in the College of Design, Construction and Planning, DCP here at UF, and Zara, and she's a fantastic person. She has been doing research, taking photos, putting together a routine. They have a storage area. They have been meticulously logging in submissions to the LP magazine, strike that, submissions to the LP museum. So we have an area dedicated, think of a wall and a half, if you will, but you'll see kiosks

and monitors and all types of items that will be curated. We'll try and rotate and have themes through the years. This is not what we do, right? We're a research organization, but the suggestion was, hey, what's a pretty persistent, let's say quarter century now, location that makes sense for something like an LPAP museum? And that would be at LPR six labs here at the innovate hub at University of Florida. So it's ongoing. We're excited about it. If you if you anywhere in the world have been involved in loss prevention, asset protection, security for retailing and end restaurants as well, then please reach out to Diego,

D-I-E-G-O at lpresearch.org. He and Zara and the team will make sure that we take care of your items, your memories. Now, having said that, as with any museum, and this is what we've learned through our research, typically if you submit something to any kind of museum for curation, it's not something that you love and sleep with every night because it's something that you may or may not be able to get back just because if it's in curation or in storage before as it rotates in and out,

or in storage before as it rotates in and out. There could be loss or damage or things like that. So, but we're very excited about this and we'd love to get any and every item that we can that really tells the story of loss prevention and 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, and now the 2020s. So it's a good story. We've got books from the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s, and now the 2020s. So it's a good story.

We've got books from the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and beyond and other items here or that people have pledged that they're going to send in. If you have them, you know somebody that does, then again, please reach out to us at the LPRC. So next time we'll talk a little bit about some of the research we're doing in the field. We just completed what we're very excited about, we think it's a landmark project that we've been working on for quite a while called Serial Offender. And the idea is that those individuals or those crews of individuals that move from

place to place, store to store, sometimes town to town and state to state, and even country to country. But those people that serialize, that they offend and victimize across place and time, it's not a one-off hit, right? And so with the Serial Offender, we're working on leveraging the Detect, Effect, Connect model, and this is what we use to make sense of the world, to conduct research and to put sensors out to share, to fuse platforms, to put out better and better technologies

and devices and protocols, processes that reduce that. We'll fill in more blanks and tell you what we found, but we had a major retailer, we had our Gainesville Police Department, investigations people, all of us out there in the field working on this as a phase 1A. It's gonna be a multi-phased program that's gonna extend throughout Gainesville

and then up into Atlanta and beyond as part of our translational science mission here at the LPRC. So please stay in touch, operations at lpresearch.org. Let us know what you need and want on this podcast, Crime Science, and stay in touch and stay safe. 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.