LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review: Episode 29 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, Tom Meehan and Featured Guest Terrance Gainer

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

Special guest Terrance Gainer, founder of Terrance W. Gainer, LLC, joins the CrimeScience podcast to talk about the election outcome response, the substantial increase in murders and non-fatal shootings, data reporting, and police departments adaptations to increase public engagement & safety. Our co-hosts also discuss the pandemic, social media censoring algorithms, consumer perception of the new normal, holiday season predictions, and much more. Terrance W. Gainer is the founder of Terrance W. Gainer, LLC, a security and business development firm. In 2014, the United States Senate appointed Chief Gainer as the 38th United States Senate Sergeant at Arms, a culmination of 11 years of Service on Capitol Hill as Sergeant at Arms and Chief of the United States Capitol Police. Terry began his law enforcement career as a police officer in the Chicago Police Department rising through the ranks. An accomplished attorney, Terry served as chief legal officer of that department before he entered the Illinois State Government as Deputy Inspector General and Deputy Director of the Illinois State Police. He served at the U.S. Department of Transportation as Special Assistant to the Secretary before being appointed as Director of the Illinois State Police. Terry also served as Executive Assistant Chief of Police for the Metropolitan Police Department and four years later was selected to be the Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police. He then entered the private sector as a Chief Executive Officer responsible for a multimillion-dollar innovative law enforcement program supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terry is a decorated combat veteran serving in Vietnam and retired as a Captain in the United States Navy Reserve. His degrees include a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, a Master of Science in Management, a Juris Doctor degree, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review: Episode 29 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, Tom Meehan and Featured Guest Terrance Gainer appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to 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. We use Bosch Camera's onboard intelligent video analytics to quickly locate important recorded incidents or events. Bosch's forensic search saves you time and money by searching through hours or days of video within minutes to find and collect video evidence. Learn more about intelligent video analytics from Bosch 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. Today, we've got our team. We've got a special guest coming up in a moment. I want to really quickly kind of go through looking, you know, some of the testing with COVID-19.

Looks like cases are up, case counts. It's disparate. We're seeing this across the entire world, even countries that have had very severe and sustained lockdowns. So it's a highly transmissible virus that's not easily contained. We know that there are all kinds of effects from these lockdowns. They probably helped bend the curve initially and reduce some of the hospitalizations and really bad outcomes. Looks like COVID fatigue is starting to set in is what it's being labeled. People are trying to study and understand compliance levels

and how people are responding and reacting. Some of the latest data are indicating that the actual fatality rate right now at this point seems to be around 0.5% of those that are diagnosed positive with COVID-19. Still trying to determine, is at 0.5%, which is about five times larger than you would expect in a severe seasonal flu outbreak. But at five times five means we're talking about a fraction of that number, but we're still at 99.5% of those infected don't seem to have that severe of an outcome. But more to come on the research, still hand hygiene, mask, and distancing to reduce the amount of viral particles that one might on board, which may stave off infection or certainly more serious disease. Right now, 319 known documented therapies in trials of various, some are still online, what they call in silico through heavy-duty computer simulation,

but that well over 200 are in some sort of clinical study outside, either in animal models or in humans. Numerous, numerous antiviral therapies now in clinical trials. Three immune modulator drugs that are designed to reduce the most serious overimmune response by many of the cytokine storms, if you will, the Brady-Kinnon storms. So three of those are just getting ready to go into phase three trials. More cell-based, as well as more anticoagulants. I know here at the University of Florida, another cocktail, including they're also looking at anticoagulants as treatments. Vaccines still, now we're up to 2133 of which 36 are two and three.

So there's quite a bit of activity around the globe. It's amazing and incredible to see these. There's a united front. And of course, with modern technology, scientists can maintain up to the second on what others are seeing and doing, what they're finding. But there are tens of thousands now of papers, research papers, which is almost undigestible. But again, with the advent of artificial intelligence, trying using that type of technology to go through and make sense of what's coming out, but then also separate what have been seriously peer-reviewed and those that are pre-peer review. We'll switch over here to looting and violence. Many of you saw that Walgreens announced that they had to invest over $35 million in restoring their stores just in the Chicago area due to rioting and violence. And that's just in one market, if you will. We saw that this type of

violence is sustained across the board. I talked to a vice president who wanted, has had to be restored 11 times. They've put several million dollars into one, just one location as an example. But we see that the rioting and looting has been somewhat persistent over the years. It's very intense now, continuing these acute flare-ups. But we even see when the Lakers won the NBA championship, the celebrations there in LA by the center. The CBS was looted, almost completely destroyed. Starbucks, IHOP, buses. So writing's not, of course, limited to this violence, to other social issues. Looking ahead, what's LPRC up to, to help support the over 60 major retail chains we're working with and conducting research for?

We've got a 2020 election call. When you all hear this, we'll be past that. But this Wednesday, which is tomorrow at 1 p.m. Eastern, we've got another cluster call with our members. We're going through three scenarios, clear red, clear blue, and confused election outcomes. I don't see how any of them would be a little confused, but trying to do some real deep dives and understanding around what triggers might occur from the different election outcomes or how it plays out. And then what, you know, why, what, where might occur to supply chains, the digital infrastructure, and then of course, the actual physical structures to safeguard these vulnerable people in places should we see even more violence, digital attacks,

and so forth. We'll have Dr. Patrick Treanor of the University of Florida, Florida Institute of Cybersecurity, walking through some of the vote, the digital voting scenarios, and then, but spending most of our time talking with him around the digital threats and things that we might look at throughout our infrastructures. We'll also have working with Brosnan. We will be working with a retired CIA officer, retired FBI senior officer, going through scenarios with them on more of the physical side and also understanding some of the groups, who they are, how they operate, whether they have leaders or not is not really the issue, but rather what they're inclined to do, what their capabilities are, what their inclinations are. Looks like sustained legal threats by initially blue and now by red. So that kind of

thing can tie up what the outcomes are and can sustain this. So if it takes longer, that may be a good sign or it may be a bad. So there's nothing but radical uncertainty like everything else in 2020. We'll be discussing on that call two tools. Kenna, our research team leader, she's tapped into some violence data sets and some data sets that have been tracking the demonstrations across the United States, where they occurred, what they were about, who some of the primary actors were within those, and if they turned violent or not. And if they turned violent or not, a little bit around what that looked like. So that, and then this can all be mapped. And so she's been doing that, demonstrated that to us yesterday to get an idea of this will be available to our retailer

and solution members to look at where they can look at their own possible scenarios. We also have, and Tom will talk a little bit more about this, Tom Meehan coming up here, We also have, and Tom will talk a little bit more about this, Tom Meehan coming up here, FusionNet and using that Discord platform that will the corporate level, as well as local channels that will stand up as it looks like it's merited. And again, Tom will talk a little bit more about FusionNet. So we'll have two tools that will come out of this election call for the LPRC members to help them better understand and handle, prepare for and handle and recover from what may be. The tools also, of course, have been designed and handle, and recover from what may be. The tool's also, of course, been designed, and we're designing it still in beta, to help us better understand and communicate and handle and prepare for and handle and recover from dangerous weather.

Now, moving on to IMPACT, 2020's LPRC IMPACT Conference. Again, we've talked about it. I think it was just a tremendous success. I've never seen better content at a loss prevention or asset protection conference in my career. And I started going in the late 80s to the NRMA, which became NRF and the IMRA, which became RILA's conferences back then, as well as ASIS, or what we called as is back then. But that content will be available at lpresearch.org. Some great content, great panels with informed speakers and very well orchestrated. I would highly recommend you all go on there. Some of the new innovate video that came from that or was not actually shown during impact will also be available for those that want to learn a little bit more about it.

At Innovate, I've mentioned artificial intelligence, particularly computer vision that we've been working with. So we've got now two curbside pickup projects, the one I can't really describe that is in the zone four or the parking lot. We are also using it, of course, in working with companies and retailers on some of the things everybody knows, elevated body temperature detection, no mask detection, social distancing or physical distancing violations, good things to help there. And again, we continue to work on Good things to help there. And again, we continue to work on attending a data set, action data set around harmful behaviors in the stores and lots that we got a grant from the University of Florida Informatics Institute. We've got some two robotics projects that I'm able to collaborate on with the industrial systems engineers here with Dr. Bo Yihou that I'm excited about. So a lot of cool things going on with Innovate. The virtual reality, the VR lab, the platform is becoming more amazing every week. I'm excited about that. We're talking to the retailer

right now that would like to use it to better understand and look at different characteristics of their store. But you can now get in there and change almost everything about it with the different layers and do it pretty easily. And then just look at it, or you can actually go in, immerse yourself, get customers to go in there virtually. Even shoplifters, obviously, our store employees, designers, the merchants, everybody can get in there now and really get a better experience and do things quicker, do less expensively, safer, and so on, trial different options and

combinations of options and even different layouts. We know that the retailer's stores, each and every store is different, but particularly have different format models that have evolved over the years. So it allows some of the transformation so you can look at different store layouts even within one chain. So exciting things, a ton of research going on. We're going to have Kenna Carlson come on from LPRC and describe in an upcoming episode what the 2020 and then the upcoming 2021 LPRC research agenda looks like, what we're emphasizing, what projects are underway or in planning. We'll have Dr. Corey Lowe, one of our research scientists,

describe also some of the projects he's involved in, and we'll go from there. So with no further ado, if I might turn it over to Tony Zanoff, and we'll keep on rolling. Thank you very much, Reid, for that great update. It's really my great pleasure this morning to introduce our special guest, Terry Gaynor. Terry is the founder of the Terrence W. Gaynor LLC, a security and business development firm. In 2014, the United States Senate appointed Chief Gaynor as the 38th United States Senate Sergeant of Arms, a combination of 11 years of service on Capitol Hill and Sergeant of Arms and Chief of the United States Capitol Police. Terry began his law enforcement career as a police officer in the Chicago Police Department, rising to the ranks.

An accomplished attorney, Terry served as chief legal officer of that department before he entered the Illinois State Government as deputy inspector general and deputy director of the Illinois State Police. He served at the U.S. Department of Transportation as Special Assistant to the Secretary before being appointed as Director of the Illinois State Police. Terry also served as Executive Assistant Chief of Police to the Metropolitan Police Department and four years later was selected to be the Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police. He then entered the private sector as a chief executive officer responsible for a multi-billion dollar innovative law enforcement program supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terry is a decorated combat veteran serving in Vietnam

and retired as a captain in the United States Navy Reserve. His degrees include a bachelor's degree in sociology, a master's in science management, a juror's degree, doctorate degree, and an honorary doctor of humane letters. It's my really, really great pleasure to introduce Terry Gaynor. Tony, thank you very much.

It's great to be with you. And much of what was, Reid was mentioning, I think is appropriate to comment on. So I thought maybe in the next few minutes, we could talk about the election situation going on in various cities and how police are responding and what the crime trend is and what some of our major concerns are. So first, let's talk about the elections because it's looming. All the police departments across the United States are very concerned about what may come out of that. And Reid mentioned the whole issue about riots and disorders. So when you think of the election coming up, along with the potential of some decisions being made in major cases that led to some of the major rioting, whether it's in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Louisville,

sometimes we think there's a little bit of like a tinderbox out there waiting for a spark, the things to go very bad. So police departments are doing such things like this. Minneapolis, for instance, is creating a position called Sergeant at Arms, a term I'm familiar with, where they will have someone at each polling place to try to be the eyes and ears of the city or the county and keep peace in that way. New York, it's an all hands on deck situation. So they'll have as many officers as they can working in those various polling places. officers as they can working in those various polling places. And I noticed Miami just recently announced that they're canceling all days off during that time frame. And Chicago Police is

doing something similar. Tony mentioned what I have been doing. I currently work projects for the Justice Department in Cleveland, St. Louis, Saginaw, Michigan, Gary, Indiana. So I have a good sense of what's going on in these various cities. And everybody's a little bit concerned about what the elections may bring as the voting is being tallied and what the outcome may be, depending on who wins and who loses. So there'll be a lot going on there. And I suppose it comes as no surprise to you that being a retailer, being a police officer or being a chief is very difficult during this time. So while all that is going on, here are some of the crime trends, and I'm sure you're pretty much aware of this. Murders, non-fatal shootings are up in almost every major jurisdiction where there's been substantial increase. And I'll give you an example.

In New York City, all of last year, they had 264 murders. So far this year, they've had 354. At the same time, their budget has been reduced by a half a billion dollars. They're down some 2,600 officers. So you see not only from a police response, but what that means for retailers and what the expectation is of police responding to that. I know it's also in Oakland. They've had a 50% budget reduction. Their murders are up almost double from the last year and our non-fatal shootings are going in the same way.

And the police in almost every major city, the number of officers is being reduced through retirements and the hiring problem that's been ongoing in those cities. So there's just a combination of things that make this all very difficult. And I'm sure you've talked before about how prosecutors or what attitude they're taking towards theft from retail establishments. So police departments are trying to figure out what the city wants the police department to do, They're trying to figure out what the city wants the police department to do, what the business community wants us to do. Now, here's the other thing.

Speaking of crime science, you know, the Uniform Crime Reporting reports each year to the FBI about what the to switch to a new program, NIBRS, the National Incident Reporting System, which is much more detailed and requires a lot more work. Unfortunately, only about 75% or less of the cities are prepared to go to that new NIBR system. What that really means come January 1st, 2021, 25% or so of the cities across the United States won't be able to submit their data to the FBI, and which in turn won't make that data available to the likes of the business community or city administrators. So it may be one thing that you and your constituents, your members want to take a look at. Where is your particular jurisdiction in its reporting efforts to the FBI? But here's some good news. Not everything is completely bleak. I think police departments are trying to be very innovative, as you are, in running your businesses on what they can do.

And I'll give you a for instance. Norfolk recently announced a program. Let me back up a little bit. You probably know that about 80% of the calls to police departments probably don't actually require the presence of a police officer. That may have an unfortunate consequence for retailers. But one of the things Norfolk is doing is they're going to have call screeners talk to the caller and try to get some sense of whether that's an emergency situation. If it is not, and likely it will not be an emergency, they're going to then set the caller

up to a Zoom meeting with the police department. So police departments are going to try to use the same type of thing that most businesses are doing now in this COVID period to go to online reporting and conversations with the public. In Chicago, they've set up strategic decision support centers in all their 23 districts across the city, trying to get timely data to police departments, to the officers in a particular district, so they can be more responsive as to what the problem areas are in the district and who the problem troublemakers are. In San Francisco, they recently announced that the fire department and health services will send individuals to those calls that traditionally have been responded to by police officers, all those mental health cases. And there's some estimate that 20 to 25 percent of the calls that go to police departments really require intervention from a health perspective.

And so San Francisco is going to try something radically different. Francisco is going to try something radically different. Saginaw Police Department, given that the interactions with the city, with the public is so limited because of COVID, they're going to try front porch roll calls that are Zoom oriented. So everybody's trying to take a little bit of use of the technology to accommodate reduced numbers, reduced budget, and increased crime. I hope that answers some questions or gives you some thought. Tom, we're going to switch it back over to you. Thank you, Terry, and thank you, Reid. I'll try not to be too repetitive because I think we're all talking about the same things,

but I'll start by talking about the fusion net and an update for the group. We started off with that project calling a virtual SOC or virtual special operations command center and we realized it would be different than what some of the traditional virtual SOCs were out there. So Reid mentioned we have an election call tomorrow to kind of talk through that and during that call we'll talk a little bit about the fusion net and what some of the processes. We have about a dozen or so testers that are active and then probably eight to ten more people that are monitoring through the fusion net.

And what we're doing with the fusion net is we're collecting kind of your typical open source data that you would, whether it be social media listening, news, traditional news media, and we're digesting and it in a format where retailers, law enforcement professionals can consume that data. Right now, it's still in the beta stages, as Reid said, but the plan was and still is to have a live working fusion for the election and really center around civil disturbance and some of the events that would potentially be disruptive to retailers. I talked, I think, a little bit last week about some of these fringe or smaller known groups,

and we'll continue to monitor those. I think we spoke about the Proud Boys, and I'm not going to be repetitive about that, but I think what we're starting to see through the fusion net is there are these small subset groups, not necessarily led by anybody, not necessarily even organized groups as much as a few people getting together and using the power of social media to make themselves appear bigger. just intention seekers. And some of them are very small niche groups that potentially could cause harm, but don't have the resources or the size to really make an effect. So we're going to talk a little about that. And then I'll talk a little bit about kind of the subject of social media. And for those of us that are into the social media world and following the news, there was a New York Post article regarding Biden that Twitter censored, and there was a lot of backlash and a lot of information that went around that. And as always, we're going to stay neutral and not really talk

so much about the article. But I had a lot of questions on why and how Twitter would do that and its free speech and among other things, regardless of what position you take, the social media, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are in a very precarious situation because they have this format where people can go and publish information. So there are some human-driven decisions where there are things that go for review, there are options to press a button to flag, and then there are some algorithms that pick things up. And one of the challenges with this is that there are going to be things that are caught in that fishnet that necessarily shouldn't be and that become very politically charged. And this particular instance, what I wanted to talk about is the importance of when you're using social media for threat intelligence or brand awareness, you need to be mindful of that there are a lot of things that came from, where you're not focused on one source or one curriculum source.

So using Twitter as the example of it is a consumption tool, but there are things that will get filtered out both by design from an algorithm standpoint and also by this filtering side, Twitter took an unusual stance and Jack Dorsey did apologize for the way it was portrayed, but didn't really get into the specifics of what the future would be. And there was a lot of misinformation around other things that were being blocked. Really, to round it out, the important part here is to understand that in your program, to make sure that you're doing some validation and fact-checking yourself. And a lot of times, and I hate to say this, but you just got to use common sense. If it doesn't make sense, it probably isn't true. And Reid and I were talking about this offline. And Twitter allows you as an individual to flag a post. And if enough people flag a post, the algorithm will stop that post. So it's important to know that when you have fringe groups, whether they're the left or the

right, they can effectively change the narrative in social media by flagging and by basically counterposting. So just keep in mind in the next 10 days or so that social media is a great tool to communicate and to look at for a threat intelligence tool. But it's really important that you have a varied of sources and validation methods. And that's one of the things we're going to focus heavily on in the FusionNet to try to make sure that we can get as much information and some of that human intelligence on the ground. So not waiting for someone to report it, but actually having a retailer say, this is what's happening. This isn't what I'm hearing is happening. This is what I'm actually seeing. This is what my folks on our ground are saying. And here is some video or photos to support it.

That'll really help in those situations there. And then I'll just round it out with continuing to drive the awareness on the cyber front, this is a perfect storm between COVID, civil unrest attacks around the election and COVID-19. They're up over a thousand percent and emails that really are targeted to get someone to click on a link and give some information or share a password. So I know that I've probably said it hundreds of times, but be very mindful, especially now to pay extra special attention to those messages and those links that you're getting and not just clicking on them. So in the interest of time, I'm going to turn it over to Tony. Thank you very much, Tom, and great content so far, Lo.

So let me wrap it up, as I do every week, by talking about some of the other retail industry trends that are taking place. And I'm going to start with the consumer. There was a new KPMG Global Consumer Survey, Wave 5, that looked at what's happening in the mind of consumer. This was actually a global survey, and it actually included the United States, but multiple other major markets. So consumers see the current challenges for the new normal to extend for the next 12 months. Net spend is expected to be down 22% over the next six to 12 months. Personal safety has moved into a top three purchase decision criteria. So number one is the value for money. Number two is the ease of buying.

Number three is my personal safety. Number four is trust in the brand. And number five is consumer experience. So it gives you an idea how safety is still a very important part for consumers. Net trust in retail companies is actually declining. It was down 4% versus pre-COVID-19. And that's a drop of negative 7% in 11 weeks. Spending in grocery stores continues to increase by 11% in the next 6 to 12 months, but we're going less and we're spending more on each trip.

Non-grocery, which is the problem, is actually going to drop 34% in the next 6 to 12 months. And then, interestingly enough, from the survey, what would convince shoppers to return to large stores? The top three for groceries were sanitized baskets and trolleys, provide hand sanitizers, and enforce social distancing. social distancing. The top three for non-groceries were enforced social distancing, provide hand sanitizers, and limit number of customers inside the store. So safety, as you can see all over this, is one of the big concerns for consumers as they go to retail stores. Some new data this week from Visual Capitalist on Amazon and how big they've gotten, especially with the pandemic. So they are now the world's most valuable retailer valued at one point seven trillion dollars. The company is expected just one company to account for four point six percent of total U.S. retail sales in 2020. And interesting to me is where they get their money.

So 50% is from all that stuff they sell you online. 12% is from their web services. Nearly 20% is from third-party selling services. 7% from subscriptions. 5% from physical stores like Amazon Go and also Whole Foods, and then 5% others. So for a total, they had revenue of $322 billion. It gives you a size of what Amazon and what it's done in the pandemic. And let me close with the five predictions from Retail Dive for the holiday season. So expect a much longer holiday season. I can tell you it's in full gear. A successful Prime Day took place already from Amazon, which kicked it off. E-commerce will be king this holiday season. Stores will fill a major role as fulfillment centers and shipping could be an issue as there

are shortage of actually shipping. And I'll talk about this more in future session. And consumers are going to go finally to stores less. They're going to consolidate store visits. So that's a little bit in terms of what's coming up for the holiday season. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Reid. Hey, everyone. Kevin Tran here. Reid had to hop off early for another call, but I'd like to thank Terry, Tony, and Tom on his behalf. And thank you to our amazing listeners.

Tune in again next week for our latest and greatest episode. Thank you. 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 Laws Prevention Research Council.