LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 47 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

NEW Vaccines, NEW 5G Network, NEW COVID-19 Relief Bill! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including a recap of the LPRC IGNITE and Strategy@ events, the new Johnson & Johnson Vaccine, 5G Network’s Worldwide Expansion, and the new COVID-19 Relief Bill. The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 47 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio 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 the science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP-related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance 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 is our latest in the weekly update series. I'm joined by my colleagues, Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, as well as our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to kind of do a whirlwind tour together with you all, looking at all things retail and trying to put out some of the latest and make sense of it. And most importantly, look for indicated actions that we can take. So we start, of course, on my end with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease pandemic that we've all been in now approaching one year on a more global basis. And talk about the disease. You know, we're well over a half a million deaths in the United States attributed to the disease so far.

And I know that we lost a member of the LPAP family, Danny Watkins, to the disease or all are in part. And Danny, unfortunately, is not the first and a great colleague and member of our community for so many years. So it can be a very, very benign disease. It can be a very, very serious disease. very serious disease. It so much depends on the dosing as we've talked about. It looks like the amount of inoculum that we onboard may play a role, but it certainly is our immune response or non-response that seems to drive so much of the outcome and how we handle it as with so many other diseases and pathologies. And the viral variants continue as everyone predicted. Evidently, this RNA-type virus does not evolve as rapidly or as haphazardly as others, but it still does.

And so we see the replication errors in others that are driving these mutations, if you will. And many of the variants are benign or even helpful, but it looks like, of course, that several in a slightly growing number of the variants are a little more transmissible to a lot more transmissible, and one or more may be more virulent. In other words, more likely to cause, I guess, serious disease in us as humans. And again, remember, this is not a human virus or one that evolved necessarily in humans. So that's why, number one, it's creating so many serious issues for so many people globally. Also, why we're having to figure it out. But with such unprecedented joint collaborative research going

on around the world, and has been now for 12 months, plus preceding research because of SARS-CoV-1 and other somewhat similar type viruses, including coronaviruses, it gave us a little bit of a head start in clearly our ability to rapidly sequence and look at the gene lineup of, in this case, this particular virus and now its variants. That's why you see such rapid launch capability as far as vaccines are going. And I think there's been skepticism by some, well, how come this happened so quickly? Well, because mRNA, again, vaccines and therapies have been under serious development, my understanding is development for well over a decade. So they were way ahead.

They just kind of replaced one gene sequence for another. In other words, putting in the coronavirus in there and taking out whatever else was in there and then rapidly doing the needed research in phase one, phase two, and phase three following exhaustive global clinical analysis and preclinical analysis. So here we are. We've got several vaccines available. We understand that over across the world now well over or about approximately a quarter of a billion humans have now had at least one of the doses if it's a two-dose series. The United States, well over 55 million have received at least one. In the United States,

we've got over 25 million Americans now that have completed both doses. So they've completed the regimen either hours or days or weeks out, in some cases even months now. So we're really dramatically increasing the amount of vaccinated people in the United States and the world. in looking at some of the vaccines. Of course, we know that in phase one now, they continue to pour in and there are now 41 vaccines in phase one trial. And there are dozens more that are in preclinical analysis, pre-trial. We've got at least 28 in phase two trials and 20 vaccines in phase three trials, in addition to the six now that have emergency use authorization. We understand, of course, the J&J vaccine also now, in addition to the Pfizer and Moderna in the United States, received emergency use authorization and was

shipped out on this Sunday night. We're recording this Tuesday morning. And so it's our understanding that starting today, already Tuesday, people will start to receive the one dose refrigeration only needed J&J vaccine. Again, the reports seem to be that it may not be as efficacious against asymptomatic or low symptomatic disease, but seems to be highly effective against serious disease, hospitalization, and fatalities. And again, the claims out there

are that this vaccine was being tested in two, phase two and three trials as the much more virulent or more virulent and certainly more transmissible variants were starting to circulate. This vaccine was heavily tested in South Africa, I believe Brazil and other places, as well as the United States. So that holds a lot of promise, the J&J vaccine, because it may be battle-tested, if you will, out there. And again, it's only a one-dose regimen right now, even though they are testing two-dose, my understanding is conducting a phase two or three trial in that way. But it's going to provide a lot of flexibility also because it does, again, does not need to be frozen well, well, well below zero. So now with three vaccines approved in the United States,

more on the way. It looks like the Novavax looking at phase three trials in the UK, South Africa looks very efficacious as well, approaching 90% efficacious. That stands to hold, that holds a lot of promise, also does not need to be kept frozen. And so, you know, we're starting to see vaccine options emerging and are moving through phase one, two, and three trials that do not require such low temperature, temperatures to maintain stability. Even though, again, we mentioned before Pfizer is doing research and has applied to the FDA to see if they can raise that temperature, that their vaccine may in fact be more stable than at first thought. And so all good news on that front. We look at the transmission and what it looks like more data continue to emerge

as far as transmission and the tactics. Masking still seems to be the best indication. That and keeping away from others, since, again, nobody gets infected. Nobody transmits or infects another unless they stand closely. And they're, of course, exhaling through their nose and mouth. Both need to be masked. They're, of course, exhaling through their nose and mouth. Both need to be masked.

The aerosols and water droplets that are required to carry the viral particles. And again, the mask and, you know, science, the scientific learnings continue to improve and evolve. And that's why you see some of the guidance change. And I know people have been skeptical. Why do we now need to layer a mask? Well, you know, think about it again. It's like a seatbelt. You know, if we have no seatbelt, we have a lot higher chance of being injured or killed, especially even at low speeds. We have a lap belt. There's an improvement. We have a shoulder belt improvement. We have a

five-point harness. There's a further improvement, but nothing. There's zero, there's no such thing as zero risk. And so, you know, kind of look at masks, all of us should as in the way of seatbelts, and they create an obstacle course. So the more dense and the more layers of material on one or both wearers, and both are obviously what's needed, and we're creating a pretty significant obstacle course for water droplets to make it through significant obstacle course for water droplets to make it through the mask or through the edges of the mask or through our nose if somebody's nose is hanging out. That's what's infecting other people. So it's just simple. There's new research too that indicates that part of the reason the protective mechanisms of action here of a mask are creating a human environment. And a lot of data we've seen really

almost for a year now show that high humidity hinders viral transmission, particularly with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So now with masks, particularly layered masks, it becomes a little more uncomfortable for us as wearers, but it partly is because we're creating a human environment. That humidity may further suppress the transmission of the virus and the viability of the actual viral particles. So, you know, there's some method to the madness. There's some logic models here into what we're trying to do as those try and learn from it. There's emerging evidence again, we don't know yet, but maybe these vaccines are further protecting by diminishing the probability that even though you may not, or the vaccinated person may not get serious disease, they may be much less likely to transmit

viral particles when they're breathing or talking, singing and sneezing and so forth. So that's what's looking like there. Well, quickly, I'm going to touch on the fact that moving out of the pandemic, former officer up there, Derek Chauvin. And I believe they've set trials within the next two weeks up there. So at LPRC, just like we've tried to do throughout the pandemic and rioting and looting and other issues that we've had elections and dangerous weather um be ready with fusionnet be ready with the possibility of a cluster call for planning um and using our fusionnet platform to communicate before during and after anything that may occur a location in place and Tom Ian may want to touch on this. He's much more an expert than I,

but again, uploading open source intelligence and anything that might be helpful, uploading onto the platform as well as using the voice channels to communicate with each other, set up nets or networks where needed. Those most likely, depending on the outcomes of any rulings and the ebb and flow of a trial and pleadings and any deals that may be set and things like that to help retailers prepare. So on ending up, I just want to touch on again the amazing success and collaboration that LPRC had

with our board of advisors at our annual Ignite, which is our winter planning meeting. This year, of course, virtual. Our last meeting last year for LPRC was in person. Our last physical meeting was Ignite. But a tremendous show out, over 30 of the top executives from the APLP world collaborating with each other, going through key issues. And then the next day with LPRC strategy at, in this case, at Ignite. Again, over 40 executives going through high-level critical issues like erosion of consequence, acute versus persistent or chronic issues. Again, chronic issues being like shrinkage or shoplifting, employee theft, some of those issues that we all deal with, safety, the operational loss and so on

that we're all trying to work to get better and better at. But the idea that these acute issues, dangerous weather, riots, and looting, the pandemic and so on that continue to come up, even active killer situations, that those acute or spike type of events are almost becoming chronic. And so what are ways to better plan for and prepare and equip? What are collaborative efforts that might take place, leveraging each other's supply chains, and so on, like we're seeing with the pandemic, where we've got retailers that are transporting the vaccines, but not actually administering, and vice versa, so that people

are working collaboratively there. So two tremendous events, Strategy At and Ignite, with key leaders. So now with kickoff in those two events, we've got three powerful events under our belt already, and we're just entered March of 2021. So an exciting start to the year. We've also at LPRC have added our third research scientist in addition to myself. Now we've got Kenna Carlson, our research team leader. We've got Corey Lowe, a research scientist. We now have Danny Acton, a research scientist. So we continue to add depth and breadth of skilled, highly, highly trained criminologists to the LPRC team.

It allows us to expand our bandwidth and add research scientists, facilitators to each and every one of our working groups. We've also moved Diego Rodriguez, who was our producer here. He has been promoted and moved to the point where he is coordinating our outreach, our marketing, what we call tell them, and then we've got get them and keep them, and that is allowing supporting our membership. So look forward to a lot of great things out of Diego and helping us further shape and spread the message about the LPRC research and results community. Operation Next Level continues to take off.

We're closing in on 30 new members that have committed to joining LPRC. The Lighthouse Consulting Team, LHC. LPRC, the Lighthouse Consulting Team, LHC. We've got five individuals there led by Jeff Powers, but we've got Russ Tate and Chad McIntosh and Stephen O'Keefe north of the border in Canada. We've got Brian Hayes. Those five are working away and coordinating with Diego, with Jesse, and all of our team to reach out and connect with, in addition to our retailers on the Board of Advisors, each and every retailer in the United States and abroad that has any interest in getting themselves and their team involved in LPRC, LPRC's ongoing year-round working groups, cluster calls, our six year-round events, access to our Knowledge Center that has

over 350 research reports that are available for download through the app or the website. Using our lab spaces, we've got five physical labs as meeting points when we can as a pandemic wanes and on and on. So really exciting time here at LPRC. And we really want to invite each and every one of you to get more involved with LPRC. If you are a member, if you're not, to highly consider, please reach out to operations at lpresearch.org or visit us at lpresearch.org. Okay, with no further ado, let me turn it over. I'm going to go over to Tony D'Onofrio. And Tony, if you could read us up on what all is going on from a global perspective in retail. Thank you very much, Reid.

Good update both on LPRC and congratulations on the two events. Those were actually exceptional. I got a chance to join some of those. So I really appreciate the leadership from LPRC. Let me start this week actually with some interesting data from Supermarket News on the popularity of the Amazon Go stores. Nearly 60% of U.S. adults would like to see an Amazon Go in their area. Only 28% have gone to an Amazon Go store and 20% have never heard of it but just to remind you for everybody what amazon go stores are the walk-in technology this is where you identify yourself going in that you're an

amazon prime customer you just pick up what you want in the store and you walk out and your amazon account is automatically charged there's about two000 of these now open in the United States. And in 2018, Amazon had announced that they were going to open 3,000 of these. So 54% of visitors in Amazon Go store described the experience as excellent. Another 35% rated it as good. Interesting that men prefer the concept more than women. So 54% of men versus 46% of women. 59% see Amazon Go stores as a threat to traditional grocery retailers

such as Walmart and Kroger stores. So walkout technology will be with us going forward in the future. Also, NRF this past weekend just published their forecast for retail in 2021. And again, they're projecting a very robust year with retail sales expected to increase in 2021, six and a half to 8.22%, reaching $4.33 trillion. Their early results also show that retail sales in 2020 grew again a substantial robust 6.7% to just over $4 trillion. And they said that the holiday season accounted for nearly 20% overall retail sales for the year. So good year in 2020 in retail, even with the pandemic in terms of sales, and a solid year looks like it's projected for 2021 from NRF.

From statistics, some new data on what's happening to 5G. So worldwide subscription to 5G will reach 600 million by the end of this year. What's interesting is Asia is leading, especially China. 500 million of these subscriptions this year will be in Asiaia by 2026 there will be over 3.3 trillion a billion 3.3 billion subscriptions in the world when again over 2 billion in asia north america by 2026 will have about 500 million of these uh 3.3 billion in europe about a billion so we have a lot of work to do in the US to catch up on the rest of the world in leveraging 5G. And 5G is extremely important because it widens the bandwidth to do, for example, a lot more video analytics and video analysis, which I think will be a key driver in terms of computer vision in the future.

Let me run briefly around the world in terms of what happened with retail last year and so far in some of the months this year. And this week, I'm going to focus on IHL and their results that they shared about Europe. So for Germany, retail sales were up 3.9% last year, but they had a tough December, which were only up 1.5% because of lockdowns. The country that's struggling the most in Europe is the UK, which in January, retail sales were down 8%, again,

because of lockdown. France was a little looser, and their December sales were up 9%. Italy, again, very tough lockdowns, down 7.1% retail sales in 2020, and down 3.8% in December. So tough times in Europe in terms of retail overall. Also, IHL this week did a study on the future of grocery. They published a new study on the future of grocery and where grocery is going. And in that study, they shared the changes in retail sales in USA

by segment and by customer journey for 2020. So this is what happened in food, drug, convenience, and mesh merchandising. Walk-in store sales were up 18%. Buy online, pick up in store was up 27%. And traditional e-commerce were just over up 9%. For general merchandise, walk-in commerce was down 3.2%. Buy online, pick up in store was up 36%. And traditional e-commerce was up 11%.

And for restaurants, hospitality, walk-in was down 7.5%. Buy online, pick up in store was up 27%. And traditional e-commerce up 9%. So we were doing a lot more buy online, pick up in stores. And the only really robust channel in terms of walk-in was really grocery, drug, convenience, and mass merchandising. The study also pointed to the continuous issues of out of stocks in grocery during the pandemic. So the equivalent loss in terms of things that were out of stock during the pandemic was minus 5.9%. So a substantial number of sales were lost because they just didn't have the product.

So think about all the shortages of bathroom tissues and sanitizer and so on. That's really lost money. And then excluding the four-week surge, grocery consumers reported experiences in out-of-stocks in one out of 4.2 trips that they were looking for in 2020. So a lot of items, key items out of stock. The study also provided some really great insights in terms of technologies that will be important in 2021. So in the next two years, growth and install Consumer mobile self-checkout will grow 300%.

And contactless payments will grow 190%. The three technologies that they see being hot in terms of the next emerging technologies that they see being hot in the next two years are SD-WENs, and that's really making the pipe that goes in and out of the store wider and much stronger. So those are going to get a lot more investment.

Microservices architecture to be able to service our consumer differently, and then edge computing to be able to process data at the edge and drive a lot more intelligence. RFID will see 200% growth in the next two years, and computer vision an amazing 400% growth in the next two years. So a lot more technology is coming to a store near you. And that's important because here at the LPRC, really it's where we provide a lot of data and science-based intelligence in terms of what that means for both the green and the red chopper and a lot of valuable information in terms of how loss prevention should react. So a lot of good data again this week. Retail's changing, a lot more innovation going into stores.

And I'm looking forward to see how LPRC can help make sense of all that. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Tony. And thank you, Reid. A lot of great stuff. And I have quite a few things, but they're going to wrap kind of together. I'll start kind of just by seconding what Reid talked about in the fusion net and some of the events that are occurring around the potential, you know, verdict that's coming around the George Floyd incident and

actually the tailoring. So there's a whole bunch of things that are occurring specifically in Minnesota. And this is somewhat just information that's out there is there's an appeal appellate court looking at reintroducing a third degree murder charge. While I'm not an attorney, it's that that charge was probably the charge that was the most likely to get a conviction based on the statutes and what what's consistent third-degree murder. So that has become kind of headline news. And I think for anybody that's following this case, pretty much all of the major news industry outlets throughout the U.S. and even globally are commenting on that.

So a lot more to come to that. My suggestion would be to continue to look at the LPRC channels that we have available and keep your eyes open on the fusion net as we get information becoming available, we'll activate the fusion net and make that information as available as possible. I would caution everyone today that is hearing information to really vet the source because I got some anecdotal information through some open source channels that I don't believe was accurate. It looked very accurate, but making comments of statements being made about the potential

outcomes that just based on everything that I know seem premature, but if I had just reacted to it, I probably would have taken an action. So why the FusionNet is so important is it allows you as a loss prevention research council member to collaborate with other folks and really bounce things off and be able to say, okay, great. Where did you hear that from? And there's somewhat of a validation methodology. That's really important when you're thinking about open source intelligence gathering, especially when you're making business decisions that affect the company's profitability and potentially on the reverse side,

the safety and liability by not reacting correctly. So a lot more to come. I think in the coming days and weeks, we'll continue to monitor it and we'll appropriately through the right channels, keep people updated. And as I think Reed mentioned, if it requires a cluster or that 530 Eastern call to get people on to gather information,

we can do that. And what's great about the FusionNet is literally it's a flip of a switch to activate it and to run into full piece. So switching gears a little bit to, I'll talk a little bit about COVID-19 and some of the things that are occurring around COVID-19 in the cyber risk world. First and foremost, the COVID-19 relief bill, which I was actually pretty pleased to see there was, you know, an overwhelming amount of people in the government. This did get global, certainly nationwide and global news attention from all the major outlets of that the relief bill is lacking anti-fraud policies around unemployment. So one of the things that was in this is there was a push to say there is a really

large percentage of fraud and relapse around around unemployment sites and, uh, hackers taking advantage. It's something that we reported, um, you know, the, on our podcast here months before, um, national news reported it. And it's, you know, not, not waving the flag that we were ahead of the game, but really just that, um, this was something that we saw, uh, it's, it's a pretty interesting thought process with the relief bill, the talking about anti-fraud policies around unemployment. The numbers are startling with the amount of

unemployment fraud and scams that went through in the last year related to COVID. And it's disheartening because we in the industry know people that unfortunately were furloughed. That took months, if not, and then sometimes never were able to get their benefits because of the confusion around the websites. So the bad guys, the hackers, really took advantage of this by creating sites to run through. This is still to date a really big problem with the way people are stealing information. But at least I think when you see things like headlines that it's going through the air, there's definitely the right folks are looking at it. I'm not sure that that's the solution, but it really runs something to say that people are at least paying attention to it. Next, COVID-19 vaccination scams. We've been

talking about this also since the beginning. They continue to go. This did get probably the most news attention in the last two weeks that I've ever seen it get from the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, the global news around the leveraging these scams and everything from doses for $30 each to pre-registration to steal information to actually selling a counterfeit vaccine. So definitely in the global attention, I think with the Johnson & Johnson of making sure you're running through. But for our listener base, it's just that consistent and constant being vigilant

and paying attention to if it doesn't make sense, it probably isn't accurate. And to date, there isn't this magic way to get a vaccine. No, if you, you know, if you pay $30, you're not going to get moved to the head of the line. And when I say that, you know, there's this, this kind of emphasis of, well, $30, you know, who would go out and do that, but it is, you know, the law of averages. So if they, if, if a thousand people a day pay $30, these bad guys make out really well. And the $30 number is a logical number because it implies, hey, if you do that, it's small

enough to get the masses to go, I'll take the risk. And that's one of the things that run through. Also on the COVID-19 front, and this was, again, global news. And this was, again, global news. It really started back in February, in the beginning of February, and continued to kind of push through in the last two weeks. I think last week there was a huge kind of information around nation-state sponsored attacks against pharmaceutical companies that are making vaccines. companies that are making vaccines. So pretty much every global news out there reported the potential for North Korea trying to hack Pfizer to steal COVID-19 pack. The interesting part here is while this was very, very widely reported, and I would CNN, literally the every news agency that you can think of, including the independent news agencies, reported this in mid-February. But then a few days later, which is unusual, South Korea, which is a community that I know of, said, hey, make sure that you're accurate. We don't actually see the same thing that everybody else is seeing.

actually see the same thing that everybody else is seeing. Well, I can't say one way or another, if North Korea attacked Pfizer, what I can say is this is pretty typical for nation state actors to go after and steal the information. So there's probably some truth to a lot of reporting of what is occurring. There's actually also some Chinese nation state backer attacked IC systems in India around COVID vaccines. So this is just kind of, again, what we've been talking about all along. As these vaccines become more readily available, there is a huge spike in nation state sponsored attacks, very, very sophisticated, very well funded attacks to try to steal trade secrets to replicate these things. This is not necessarily new. And this is definitely something we talked about. But when we think about the LPRC and everything we talk about,

it is a perfect example of someone trying to take advantage of the time. So, you know, hackers, just like organized retail time, switching their modus of operation around what's occurring. Additionally, in the U.S. front, smaller scale, but I think it was, you know, kind of interesting to note as hackers were able to hack into one of the Pennsylvania state systems to get information on appointments for COVID-19. Why is that important? Because yes, it was limited personal information, but now the question is, what do you do with that? Do you reroute that information? Do you now take that information and send information to someone saying, hey, we got your appointment here. We need to get your insurance information,

your personal information ahead of time. We need you to prepay. So it isn't all about nation, state of Tigers. It isn't all about the big huge thing you know, events. It's all of the events combined that really run, run the gamut and, and put things you know, into place. And then I'll, I'll kind of, you know, wrap up with, and this is not all related, but I thought it was important to kind of state these together is there is, you know, a host of crime that is occurring. And I'll start with the something that again, we've spoken about many times is, you know, this increase in

chargebacks and cybercrime related to COVID-19, there is an increase, the numbers are are staggering in some cases, but I think, you know, taking them with a grain of salt, because when sales are down fraud, you know, it hurts a lot harder. So, you know, how do retailers and merchants today deal with the transition to an e-com business and put in fraud and risk mitigation that doesn't slow the sale down, that doesn't stop the customer? So I think I'll continue to report on this. I found a lot of great information, but I think it still needs to be vetted. And most of the information that I'm finding is really about not so much the numbers and the increase, but what are some of the mitigation efforts? So taking a different approach of validation or a second line of approach of, OK, so maybe once our common service declined this, do we send it to a secondary or a tertiary type of screening methodology, even though it's going to cost us

more. So that's one of the things that is coming up. But there's no doubt that as the business changes, there is an increase in chargebacks and also an increase in, you know, the amount of challenges you have related to e-com goods that are running. Next, you know, next piece here is related to the crime front is, while I think we talk about this the most in ORC, is what's the impact in COVID on the increase of crime? And I think Reid participated in a couple of reporting articles and gave his piece on it. I recently were seeing an increase in some property crime and some violent crime, but it is somewhat anecdotal in the sense that while there's an increase in some cases, there's a decrease in other cases. But there was an interesting kind of tidbit of reports that didn't specify what type of crimes,

but really did an overarching of the negative impacts of COVID related to crime. And these chargebacks were in play. Hate crimes related to the Asian population and the extreme increase got global attention in the last week. Again, these numbers are somewhat staggering. You see huge percentage increases, but you have to really take into consideration in some instances with these reporting, you went from having one instance of hate crime to 10. So if you don't look at the numbers at the number space and just look at the percentage spaces, you see these huge increases in percent, but then you start to realize

there's definitely a trend right now of hate crime around Asian. And this is global. The BBC, the UK had reported it. And it really is something that, again, is highlighted in some reporting around crime and increases of crime that are really related to COVID and running through. And then the last thing is kind of the impact. And I know Reid talks about this often. And it's the impact that mask wearing is having on traditional retail crimes like robbery, like ORC, and what retailers are doing to mitigate that piece of it. There was a couple behind the scenes. So through open source

intelligence gathering, where it was, you know, very, you know, very, very clear information on telegram of, if you go to this retailer, and you wear the mask this way, the likelihood of you getting identified is X, as well as, you know, in this jurisdiction, the police don't respond. So all you need to do is wear a mask and a hat. And, you know, they're going to say that it's too much work. So there continues to be this, as we do here, as the folks listening to this podcast, hopefully are all practitioners, do the bad guys are doing the research, they're on Reddit, they're on Telegram, and they're sharing the information that basically we share on the reverse. This is a retailer that's doing X, wear your mask. And I think one of the things that I thought was really interesting is in a couple states and jurisdictions that mask wearing is not mandated and is not as

heavily used. The kind of the emphasis of if you go here with a mask, you're going to draw attention to each other. So really, really well thought out kind of information that's being shared. So I know that was a lot of things and kind of, I tried to approach them with brevity, but we'll have some updates on next week's call related to the things that I covered if they, if the updates are relevant. So back over to you, Reed. All right. Thank you so much, Tom. So much good information. Same, Tony. I really appreciate it. And, you know, I think the take home is and always has been with LPRC and with Crime Science Podcast, and particularly what

we're going through now, you know, the lessons learned from the medical scientific tech community is global collective effort to better understand dynamics and to better understand, therefore, more precise aiming points for solutions and better ways to orchestrate those solutions. What we in criminology as well as in medicine called dosing options, trying to die for better effect with fewer negative side effects and so forth. So let's all keep working together. Let's better understand if everybody or anybody had this thing figured out, we wouldn't have $50 billion in annual shrink. And obviously the intimidation, violence, the growing fraud, and even now the growing theft wouldn't be here now. So to me, it's a big call out for us all to just better understand dynamics, better understand the dynamics of the problem, the dynamics of the solution itself to what are those mechanisms of action, as well as the cascade of things, events that are causing the problem. So with no further ado, I want to thank each and every one

of you. I want to thank Tony and Tom and Diego. And for all of you, of course, for dialing in, please put the word out. Let's work together and let us know what you think here at lpresearch.org. Everybody be safe. Thank you. 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. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors

and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Office of Prevention Research Council.