LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review: Episode 31 – “Election Day” with Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, Tom Meehan and Featured Guest Richard Long (3SI)

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

On this week’s special episode, we welcome Richard Long, 3SI Senior Vice President & Director of Global Law Enforcement, to discuss Election Day and much more with our co-hosts – including law enforcement planning leading up to the results, community policing, LPRC’s virtual SOC, election misinformation, the global retail data, and emerging technologies. Richard Long is the global director of the Law Enforcement Division managing the police and FBI implementation and utilization of 3SI robbery-arrest / clandestine tracking GPS/RF technologies. He directs managers and regional coordinators throughout North America, Europe, South/Central America, and Australia who are responsible for recruitment, implementation, training, and liaison between 3SI and all government partners. He also directs 3SI’s liaison with all major law enforcement agencies at the state, federal, and international level. Currently over 8,600 police agencies and all 56 FBI Field Offices are approved for 3SI crime-fighting technologies. As an ASIS International CPP credentialed member, Richard is Board Certified in Security Management. The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review: Episode 31 – “Election Day” with Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, Tom Meehan and Featured Guest Richard Long (3SI) 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. This, our latest in the weekly review series. Here we are the day after the 2020 election, November 4th,

2020. And I really don't like saying 2020. So again, we're dealing, of course, with increasing pandemic fatigue across the globe for all the reasons. And of course, there's research out there on why would there be fatigue. And of course, there's research out there on why would there be fatigue? And of course, they're finding what we would expect as far as failing livelihoods across the globe with financial devastation being wreaked across the board, in particular, food service and other industries that are dependent on people, humans, populating their businesses physically, and all those that work there and are dependent on those businesses. Of course, the trauma of being alone for months and months and now what could be a year

or terribly isolated. We also know the subpar educational effects that are happening to children really across the globe. So it's becoming a little more difficult to maintain compliance, but it looks like the United States alone, there's been a dramatic increase, double digit increase in the economy as it starts to recover at the fastest pace, I understand from some of the economic research I've seen in history, in U.S. history. So there's some good there. On the prevention side, of course, it still comes down to block the drops, the droplets that are carrying the viral components that get up into our system. And so trying to limit the onboarding of those droplets in the virus, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or at least dramatically diminish the amount, particularly if both wearers

have a mask on, is the key. The virus can fit through the mask openings, the microscopic openings, but the droplets, by and large, find it very difficult to impossible. So that's the logic model. And then, again, almost every week, new evidence coming out from all types of research in laboratories in real world, case studies, and even randomized controlled trial or experimental designs, supporting that the fewer droplets that we onboard, the less likely we are to actually turn into the disease called COVID-19 from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Or if we do get infected, infection takes hold, the disease takes hold, then it's a serious one. Other good news is that, again, the fatality, the case or infection fatality rates all continue to drop, but also in the most seriously

ill around the United States and the world, but especially when looking at the U.S. data, that physicians, healthcare workers and nurses and PAs and nurse practitioners have, by sharing data, rapidly sharing their data across with each other in their own hospitals and healthcare facilities and across others and around the world have really learned how to treat the disease when it happens earlier and earlier and better. On the testing front, again, more and more new tests are being approved almost weekly, biweekly now to be faster faster, more accurate, and cheaper and easier to administer. And I just mentioned to go back onto UF campus and the labs. I had to go through the glamorous effort there. So it seems to be taking hold there also, though, and covering and starting to

discard or move out of circulation those tests that are less accurate, but there's still like any test, there are still false positives and false negatives involve type one and two errors with any kind of test. So, but that's a critical way to control the spread as well, particularly with regular testing. But we've seen in large gatherings, it's not, again, the tests are going to locate and find out if there's some of the virus or the infection started to take hold of the disease, but there's no 100%. The therapies

continue. We've got over 200 antivirals and heavy-duty development, over 300 other types of treatments that range in types of virus that will not allow the actual viral components to enter the cell, those that destroy the virus, those that make them less transmissible, and just all types of angles taking place, at least a dozen different types of each of these treatments, as well as other therapies for reducing coagulation, reducing inflammation, bradykinin responses, and cytokine responses, and things like that. So just a lot of research, fruitful, productive research that's taking place right now. Moving to the vaccine front, almost 90 preclinical vaccines now in assessment. Going through that research, probably they believe dozens more that have even reached preclinical phase yet.

But on the phase one trials where we're looking at safety and dose ranging or dosing options, 36 vaccines in phase one trials, 36 separate ones. in phase one trials, 36 separate ones. Phase two, larger scale, now looking at efficacy as well as safety and dosing, 14 different vaccines. Phase three, large scale, dosing efficacy and safety trials, 11, but six that are now have a limited approval. So we're seeing them. And of those in phase three trials, several of them now, hundreds of millions of doses have already been produced or in production now. Again, heavy planning in the United States and around the world on distribution strategies and the actual logistics being set up to move vaccines. And a second wave of vaccines are coming, and that's why you see 36 and 14 and 11 and so on going through, plus almost 90 in preclinical. So you'll see more and more.

Again, looking at their different mechanisms of action that these vaccines are designed to deliver. And so they're coming at it from all different types of approaches, some because the proteins and molecules they use need to be refrigerated, others don't, and so forth. So is it one, two, or three doses? Does it require cold storage? And so forth. So there's going to be a wide range of vaccine options that are going to be coming available over the next probably 6 to 12 months, maybe even in the next 90 days. We might have one or two that start to get used at scale. So that's sort of a little bit around the COVID-19 and what we're all going through. But again, prevention is still the key as we continue to see more and more people infected, which you would expect from a virus with, in the United States, over 330 million humans clustered together. But there's a lot of help on the way.

So moving over to some of the LPRC news, I'm going to ask Tom Meehan on the call today to talk a little bit more about FusionNet, our mapping tool that Kenna Carlson, our research team leader at the LPRC, developed. She continues to populate that. Now, several retailers have adopted the mapping tool that she built in Tableau, and we're also assisting by populating the tool with individual data from different retailers, all the events that they have experienced, what type of events they are. So again, we have multiple layers so we can better prognosticate or estimate where there might be a problem as triggers come up from everything that we can all imagine from NBA

and Major League Baseball championships to elections to judicial appointees to resisting arrest and other violence that might be happening out there where law enforcement and a citizen are involved. But there just seem to be a lot of trigger points going on. So better and better ways. The FusionNet's allowing our members to get together and share at the corporate level as well as in the field. And again, I'll ask Tom to talk a little bit more about it. And he's been very, very involved in helping us develop the beta test phase, which we're in, and help us populate and curate what goes into the app and to use it. But I can tell you that we've now had three different online meetings, even through our fusion, that you can talk with each other. There are actual talk channels. And we've had, on average, about eight to 10 retail chains involved each night, each evening. They

update each other on what they're doing, what they're seeing, what they're finding, what they're hearing, significant hashtags, other platforms, other intel that they're picking up from different sources on top of what's going on in the other channels that we've got on FusionNet. Live View, a company that's a member of the LPRC, one of our 78 amazing technology partners or providers. They are making available over 100 of their live view surveillance trailers. They're designed to deter and disrupt offending as well as document it and come in different colors and versions and badges and things like that that can go on them to LPRC members. So we're working to see which members might be interested in temporarily and at no cost having one or more traders sent to their stores free of charge to, again, deter, disrupt,

and document. So those are three action tools on top of the election calls that we're having. And then we've been teaming with Brosnan Security out of New York City because of the election calls that we're having. And then we've been teaming with Brosnan Security out of New York City because of the talent they've got from CIA, DHS, FBI, and NYPD to provide intel and perspective and context. On the other front, working with artificial intelligence, Dr. Lowe, Corey Lowe on on our team and I presented at two different conferences last week. The first was the HyperGator AI conference, and HyperGator is going to 3.0 version. Already, HyperGator 1.0 and 2.0 are the most powerful compute capability in Southeast United States at the University of Florida on the HyperGator system. Now with the NVIDIA $20 million AI contribution, their technology,

and with HyperGator going to 3.0, it's going to be the most powerful compute and AI capability of an academic institution. And that will continue to grow. So we presented on our hazard net research project that we're doing with a grant from the university of Florida that I'll be able to share a lot more detail later. And then also presented even more detailed, some of the initial results of our research so far at the University of Florida Informatics Institute, or UFII, conference. So one presented on Wednesday of last week, another on Friday. Some of that is available to outside, but I know on the

HyperGator AI, we had over 100 University of Florida scientists on there, but I'm not sure exactly what's available yet, but we will be putting that information out. Further, we're excited that coming up on the next week, we'll be working with and presenting, co-presenting an event with the International Organization of Black Security Executives, IOBSE, looking at using science-based security and loss prevention. How do we go forward together? And it's an amazing organization. I've had the opportunity to go to two of their events. I don't think I've ever been to a better organized and more productive events in my long career.

And so I am very proud and excited to be working with IOBSC. And we're going to present. We'll have some guest speakers. We're going to present and go through our labs that LPRC's got virtually. It's a virtual event. You're going to see a lot of students at historic black colleges and universities involved from IOBSE, as well as alumni that are placed in some of the top organizations in the United States and around the world. Stay tuned. We'll provide more information on that later.

I think on the AI IoT front, we'll be talking about this, how we want to take the high road in order to take the high ground with the IoT and artificial intelligence discussions out there that we're coming with a sound and positive intent to safeguard or protect vulnerable people in places. That's where we start. When we look at ethics and morality, we believe one of our very first obligations is to protect the vulnerable. And then we're going to take the high ground there and the high road and how we do it. So we're working on that. The Safer Places Lab concept at the University of Florida. It looks like I'll be moving over to the Wertheim College of Engineering.

I'm very excited about that, to be a criminologist in residence there as a sociobehavioral scientist working with computer scientists and engineers, some of the top in the world. behavioral scientists working with computer scientists and engineers, some of the top in the world. The Safer Places Lab is going to allow us to look at dozens and dozens of protective technologies and how we integrate those for effect at the interface with the cityscape, mass transport, moving inward to that actual place, entry-exit to places, and then finally spaces and how we can make places safer, more secure, and in some cases more efficient. So look forward to describing a little bit more of that. So a lot going on here at LPRC and the world at large in what we're calling 2020. With no further ado, I'm going to go over to my friend and colleague, Tony D'Onofrio. He's going to introduce our very special guest today, and we're going to learn a

lot about our partners in law enforcement, what they know, what they're doing, how they're adapting and adjusting in these very challenging times. So, Tony. Thank you very much, Reid. First of all, it's my great pleasure to introduce the special guest, Richard Long. Richard is a senior executive in charge of the Global Law Enforcement Division at 3SI Security that includes more than 9,000 police agencies. He served as a command officer with 30-plus years' experience with the Newport Beach Police Department and retired as a detective services commander. He currently sits on the executive oversight committee

with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the FBI National Academy Associates, the Chief Special Agents Association of California, and as its international where, he holds an active CPP credential. The bulk of his career was an investigative assignment, including organized crime, vice, intelligence, crime suppression unit, and robbery homicide. Richard is currently the state president of the California Robbery Investigators Association. He also serves as the CPP course director for Southern California. Richard is a U.S.

Army veteran and he is a graduate and class valedictorian of the FBI National Academy. He's many distinguished awards, including a Medal of Valor and two Medals of Merit. Richard also holds a BA degree in business management. So it's my great pleasure to welcome Richard Long. Well, after that introduction, Tony, I want to ask, who is this guy? Could you bring him up, please? Because that's way past the accolade that you've afforded me. I appreciate it. And in this august body, especially with the representative audience that you have, I have to tell you, my first, most challenging post-law enforcement career experience was going through classes on the weekends at Cal

Tech so that I could sit for my board exams with ASIS International to become a certified protection professional and be board certified security management. And thereupon, I learned what you guys have to deal with every day. And it taught me how much I really don't know and didn't know at the time. So I appreciate you inviting me on to your program. And I'm happy to stand for questions. So yeah, let me start and jump right into the first question. So what is law enforcement reporting, seeing, hearing, dealing, and planning for the days and possibly weeks after the just completed U.S. federal election? IACP, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the FBI, National Academy Associates, as well as some of the other professional responsibilities, I get daily briefings. And these blasts that come in are from the leaders across the globe that touch on our

law enforcement space. And this election cycle, which has been filled with problems from the jump relative to questions on how ballots were being distributed, how they were going to be calculated. Then the problems with the civil unrest that evolved in the spring and into summer. All of those things put a tremendous burden on not only law enforcement, but the business community and especially the special agents that work in private industry dealing with loss prevention. And so there has been a lot of preparation for this. And I can assure you that a lot of it is summed up in some comments that were released by Ray Kelly, the police commissioner that's retired from NYPD, a very respected law enforcement leader.

And he outlined some of the problems that could be expected. And you have to understand that because of the pre-election era rioting that occurred, the arsons, the looting that hit all of the major cities, we ended up with quite a few well-trained, well-experienced officers in our major urban cores who hadn't had to deal with this level of civil unrest in decades, frankly. And the initial riot reports that were expected to be pretty large turned out to be less concerning than, at least initially, than expected. In Los Angeles, there were 40 arrests. In Minneapolis, 14. Seattle had only eight arrests, and that was the CHOP Zone Central that was expecting some major fallout.

But because of all the riots that had happened earlier in the year, a lot of the mobile field forces and the training and, shall we say, rapid deployment of National Guard troops that had been coordinated through the National Network of Justice Department Fusion Centers, the rapidity of forces getting deployed to hotspots has been pretty quick. And one of the key things that you learn in dealing with civil disorder is that you can't allow acts of violence to go unaddressed, meaning you can't allow people to start throwing rocks and bottles, other missiles at law enforcement or starting fires without immediately getting in and taking people into custody and getting them off the street because a lot of the bystanders can be drawn into that. And we end up with larger civil disorder that becomes really dangerous and

quite dramatic. So the expectation was that there was going to be civil disorder, and the police forces across the country have aggressively been deployed, and, cooler heads will prevail and civil leaders, the political leaders, the church leaders, the influencers around the country will remind people what you're doing is you're destroying your own neighborhoods, your own communities. And in the end, you're going to be left with those bills to pay. So I hope that kind of rounds out the answer for you, Tony. Thank you, Guy. Can you also comment on the trends in community policing today, how it's evolving? And is 2020 speeding everything up and our social workers now becoming part of the response from law enforcement?

How are those trends evolving? Well, I mean, I cannot give you an answer on on the social worker side of this because this is an evolving uh question that has been percolating for a number of years but the reality is you can't put a social worker in a place where there are acts of violence that are likely without having casualties because they will go in unarmed and unprepared to deal with somebody who is all of a sudden spun off into some irrationality and that leads to an attack on the social worker. So I will just say that when people try to answer questions like that and they try to say, well, the answer is putting these mentally ill people in the field where there are these acts of violence, like somebody running around with a knife or a firearm or a baseball bat or whatever is a weapon.

And they suggest, well, let's put a social worker in there. They'll be able to talk the person who is unspooled down and allow the problem to be rectified without any application of force. The noble thought is certainly there. Everybody's going to align with the idea. We don't want to have any loss of life. There's no question in that. But these kinds of questions are always easier to answer by people not responsible for any outcome regarding their commentary. So what is going to probably be the hybrid on that, Tony, is we're going to end up with a blend of social workers that are able to respond in conjunction with law enforcement. And perhaps that will provide a window of safety for the person who is suffering a mental episode, as well as for the community itself, and of course, the social worker and the officers that are directly engaged.

Now, to your comment about 2020 speeding everything up, well, the level of violence that has been experienced in the community and the level of violence that's been put upon law enforcement officers has certainly been on the increase and seems to have accelerated. But I want you to know there's still that element. In fact, I'd like to kind of segue into some comments about key technologies, recognizing that we're in a place where we're limited for time, but I want you to know that the community policing element with law enforcement, where more and more public and private partnerships have been recognized by law enforcement commands as a force multiplier for public safety. public safety, meaning that the people that work in the loss prevention world that are dealing with organized retail crime, the loss prevention special agents that are trying to protect against burglaries, other property-related crimes, where they're partnered with their detective counterparts in a law enforcement agency, end up creating a force multiplier that benefits the business community. And that benefit to the business community then transcends into a benefit to the city itself where they're located,

the revenue streams that continue, the employment that is in forwarded, the tax dollars that come in from sales tax. Just the general revenue flow into the financial world from good, solid business practices ends up benefiting everybody. Because in the end, when these things are left unabated, ultimately and sadly, you have businesses that shutter. Even major businesses that operated once in a community will put shutters up on the door and move to a place where there's less crime, less incendiary opportunities for arson and looting. So there's a lot of things that are in play here, but I will promise you that in terms of the community policing model, there's no doubt that that is only going to expand, that is only going to increase, and you'll see more and

more police agencies partnering with businesses to help advance issues that touch on quality of life concerns. And ultimately, the police departments there and a role that kind of follows that 1829 Metropolitan Police Act by Sir Robert Peel, who was pointing out that the police department's performance should not be judged by the number of arrests that they make in a community, but more by the absence of crime in a community. And that's what police departments, police chiefs, and beat cops on the line are all driving for. I hope that gives a good answer. That's a good answer.

And what are some of the key technologies that are being leveraged more and more by police right now in terms of combating crime? After that law enforcement's communications amongst other local police going into an FBI building. Back in the Hoover days, you ended up having agents instructed, cover everything on your desk so that nothing is exposed, even to a law enforcement officer coming on property because of the security concerns of what they're doing. Fast forward to the turn of the last century into the first two decades of the 21st century, and now you've got local police officers that are tactical officers assigned within FBI headquarters and the 56 field offices around the country. That is a phenomenal change because that becomes an immediate force multiplier for the Bureau, for, in essence, all of the citizens that live in the United States. So that's the biggest change where the FBI has organized things

like the National Data Exchange, where law enforcement agencies can upload their data into this FBI database through the Department of Justice. And then all of that information can be shared across the country amongst other law enforcement organizations, which of course helps accelerate positive results for investigative leads by tying various criminal elements together, where criminals, as we've long known, they don't abide by city limits and state lines in terms of their jurisdictional reach for criminality. So we have to abide by that. And the FBI has done a great job in advancing that. The technology literally knows no bounds. Clearly, some big changes, the body cameras, the less lethal applications like the taser,

the bolo wrap for being able to take mentally disturbed people into custody by using a wrapping device around them. Things like that in terms of protecting police officers, protecting citizens, those are certainly going to be expanding. The GPS crime-fighting applications coupled with video, the automatic license plate readers, the various data sets that are out there, those have been game changers where we're able to fight criminality in the communities where the police agencies and the FBI will deploy static GPS-based, cellular-based, radiofrequency-based tracking technologies and secrete it in items that are being stolen in an area or cash packs in the local supermarkets or the banks, and they're able to respond immediately to bank robberies, violent crimes, other

criminality in a neighborhood where property is being stolen, and effect an arrest quickly while the crime is in progress. The reason that I'm mentioning is because the benefit to that is police aren't engaged in criminal encounters where somebody is, quote, a suspect of a crime. They're actually being tracked because they have committed a crime. And that's a huge benefit to avoid some of the political fallout that occurred back during the stop and frisk, stop, question and frisk phases in some police agencies that caused a tremendous amount of criticism amongst certain levels of community members that we want to avoid where we're trying to enhance those relationships. Now this gives an opportunity by using technology to be smarter in their policing and be able to save money by

focusing in on serial offenders that are largely committing the vast majority of all crimes, both violent crimes and property crimes. Well, Richard, that's excellent feedback today. Really appreciate you joining us for this podcast. And now I'm going to turn it over to Tom to talk about some of the things that Reid mentioned. So, Tom. Yeah, thank you, Tony. Thank you, Richard, for joining again. Thank you, Reid. And obviously, the day after the election, with still some questions to be answered, there's a lot of chatter.

There's a lot of chatter. Reid talked about the FusionNet, which we've been talking about pretty regularly on the podcast, as well as through all of the Loss Prevention Research Council's channels. And what the FusionNet is, for those of you that are just tuning in for the first time, is basically a virtual Special Operations Command Center. And it's more of an information exchange than anything else, using open source data to monitor events. And when we formulated this idea, we've actually gone back to the drawing board literally a dozen times. And this is kind of 2020 is the perfect year to implement it and actually get it out there. So today, and really upping for the last week or so,

we've really been heavily focused on the election. If you are not involved in the FusionNet and you're a member, by all means, reach out to anybody at the Lost Redemption Research Council or myself. We're actively modeling open source chatter related to the election and doing our best to validate and drown out

misinformation. If you were to log in now and look around election, you would see posts that are centered around planned protests and some tracking of groups to identify where they're likely going to attend and ultimately to afford off any negative impact to retail, whether it be active violence or disruption to business. One of the key things here is that because the way the platform is designed, this is not as much about an information gathering as it is about collaboration and sharing and validation. gathering as it is about collaboration and sharing and validation. I think my common theme is to make sure that you spend the time to validate misinformation. And unfortunately, regardless of what side of the political aspect you sit on, if you read all of the news and information that's out there, you'll find that almost all of it has some level of opinion-based reporting built into it. And that goes the same way with some of the social media chatter.

It's important to note that yesterday, during the election and overnight, was a relatively calm protest activity and civil disturbance in comparison to what we've seen in the past weeks. civil disturbance in comparison to what we've seen in the past weeks. I would say that there was an uptick in activity as far as communication around it, but the videos and some of the validated methods were small pockets of information. It's also very important to note that when you're thinking through and you're using social media or open source intelligence gathering to address some of the civil disturbance that could occur, taking that extra amount of time to validate as much as you can. For instance, there is probably a dozen or so events that are happening around the Philadelphia

and about 18 in the DC market right now that are relatively small, five, six, seven people together. When you read it online, it looks like this huge event. And then when you go out and to the field, you find less than a dozen people being peaceful and actually exercising the right to protest and not disrupting businesses, simply just going out and wanting to be heard. So I think it's very, very important that social media can sometimes exasperate some of those things. So again, if you haven't had a chance to look at it, go ahead and look at it. There are about 80 different plan protests for today that are being mentioned there around retail. And then there are some specific information driven towards retail. So great, great tool for the membership base and a good information exchange.

Switching gears just a little bit to talk through kind of some of the things in the news. And I have a feeling that Tony will touch on some of this, but I'll go through quickly. some of this, but I'll go through quickly. You may have seen a release that Walmart is not going to be continuing its trials with the robot to scan shelves. And the reason I wanted to really talk about that very high level is because as we continue to talk about artificial intelligence and some of the technology initiatives that are implemented throughout retail, or really throughout any business world. It's important to note that this exercise, and again, I'm reading from a Wall Street Journal article, so I don't have any firsthand knowledge, is there were kind of two main drivers that had Walmart stop the program.

One was the perception seen from their customers and the use of AI and robots in the store. seen from their customers and the use of AI and robots in the store. And the other was after they peeled back that there were other simpler, easier ways to achieve the same things. It wasn't necessarily a cost driver, just the ease. And I continue to say, as we look at ways to digitize our environments, whether it be an e-com initiative or inventory visibility initiative or any of those things, it's important to remember that COVID has accelerated the digitization. It's also important to know that the human element of all of these technologies generally still need

humans. And the fix of just implementing technology doesn't work unless you have some sort of human situation there. And additionally, and I talk about this regularly, digital risk protection, the more technology that you implement into an environment, the more digital risk there is. And I'm not suggesting that we don't continue down the path of innovation. As everybody knows, I'm a futurist and my life and career is based on technology. So I believe that technology is in the forefront of retail and asset protection and law enforcement, for that matter. But I also believe that the balance of how it's implemented, how it's regulated, and how humans interact with it are a key facto. And then I'll round out with that

there is continued chatter around cyber events around the election. So the FBI, the Joint Cyber Terrorism Task Force, and multiple law enforcement agencies are watching very closely targeted attacks around the election system. And now is the time where that misinformation can really be challenging. So there have been a couple of reports, so all the reports have just simply been that there has been a closer eye than there was in the past on the impact of potential cyber incidents related to the election and to make sure that there is no disruption in the election piece of it. Because regardless of whether there is an announcement today, there will still be 10 to 12 days of some ballot counting

and some other things that occur, which, by the way, I think it's important to note is the norms. It is the norm that occurs every election cycle where there are absentee ballots, military ballots, there are all sorts of things that happen. So I think it's important to note that that's actually not unusual. I think it's just the way it's being portrayed this way. And with that, I wish everyone to stay safe, and I will turn it over to Tony. Thank you very much, Tom.

And yes, good comments on the Walmart abandoning the robot, computer vision robots running down the aisle. And the interesting, just to add to what you said, one of the simple methods they decided and discovered, Walmart used to have 2,000 people picking groceries. Because the pick, buy online, pick up in store is so popular, they have added 74,000 people running up and down aisles picking groceries, and they become a really intelligent source in terms of what's in stock. And that's a different way to actually get to the same conclusion using a human element to actually provide that information. But let me wrap up this week's podcast with some latest retail data. Let me start with some from IHL in terms of how we are doing in the retail by sector through September. So

groceries up 12%. Drug is up about 1%. Mass merchandise is up 5%. Department stores are down 18%. Specialty goods, soft goods are down nearly 33%. Specialty hard goods are up nearly 4%. Convenience stores are down 16%. Restaurants are down 20%. And non-store or pure play online is up 20.5%. One of the comments that were just made by Tom in terms of new digital technologies coming into stores that actually is true. In fact, I just saw a forecast

about the amount of mobile and self-checkout solutions that are coming into stores in 2021. So self-checkouts will be up 12%. Mobile devices for store managers will be up 26%. Mobile devices for associates will be up 12%. Mobile devices for store managers will be up 26%. Mobile devices for associates will be up 20%. Store-owned mobile point of sale is going to be up 27%. And consumer checkout on their own phone or their own app will be up another 22%. So a lot of technology is coming into stores going forward.

Also interesting this week is a new study in terms of how grocery is adapting. Remember, grocery is one of those essential retailers that stayed open and is doing extremely well. So there was a new study from RIS News in terms of technology going into grocery stores. The top five challenges in the next 18 months at grocery stores see our labor markets, employee and shopper safety, price competition, increasing margins and profit, and Amazon. The top five business opportunities in those 18 months are advancing digital capabilities, expanding curbside pickup, expanding mobile offerings, developing personalized marketing capabilities, and expanding home deliveries. There's a lot of focus right now in terms of

in-store technology going forward. And you're going to see, so the key projects that are going to get started in grocery in the next 12 months are technology thrown at click and store monitoring of KPIs, shopper tracking, mobile devices for managers, and home deliveries. Eighty-four percent of the grocery retailers have increased their technology spend because of all the digital transformation that's been accelerated. Now, the reason I bring that up and I wanna make one closing comment is, all these new technologies lead to new opportunities for theft and it's really important for this audience to engage with the LPRC in terms of crime signs, better research, so we can get better at combating theft

and fraud going forward. And with that, I'm going to turn over to Reid. Wow. What a lot of information. I want to thank everybody, Richard and Tom, Tony, for everything, all that input. Incredible insight. I want to thank all of you all out there for everything that you do. Please stay tuned. out there for everything that you do. Please stay tuned. Let us know at operations at lpresearch.org,

operations at lpresearch.org. What you think, what you need, more or less, differently. We love feedback. Check out everything that's going on at lpresearch.org, the LPRC website. Our producer, Kevin Tran, is also our webmaster, marketing master. And he has always opened ideas, but you wouldn't believe all the great things that he's done and the ways you can explore and learn and join up into the LPRC community. So again, everybody stay safe out there and have a good one. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Laws 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. 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.