LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 56 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: May 9, 2021

The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 56 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 that's our latest in the weekly update series. I'm joined by co-hosts Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, our producer today. Mita Rodriguez, she and Diego are rotating on helping us produce and onboard these podcasts. More crime science podcasts are in the planning for our other series. So, stand by for that. Guests are being discussed and reached out to as we speak. So, I'm going to roll into the global pandemic still here, still dramatically shaping behavior worldwide. And with our particular focus on retail, it's obviously having those, the significant impacts still. We see also different pockets and ways that the disease, the virus itself transmits itself and how it affects differentially. And we see that, for example,

in some states in the U.S. or pockets within states or even pockets within local communities. Some that are naive to the virus, they've not had it, they've not been vaccinated, but all of a sudden they're exposed and maybe more vulnerable. But we also see that on a grand scale, tragically, in places like India right now, that's literally eaten up by the virus. Hundreds of thousands of new cases every single day. Dramatic hospitalization to the point where if you listen to podcasts and see some of the more accurate reporting, I mean, people are laying everywhere, just wishing they could get a bed, trying to get oxygen in. We're seeing some of the counterfeiting going on of oxygen tanks, of vaccines, and so on. The United States and other countries around the world have been rushing vaccines and therapies and oxygen and respirators and oxygen boosters and other technologies and people into the country. So we know this SARS-CoV-2 virus is for real and the disease COVID-19 is for real.

We still have people in the United States that are being infected at high rates in certain areas with high hospitalization and death rates, fatalities in certain areas. Those that are heavily vaccinated areas, we're not seeing that, similar to what you saw first in Israel, then in the UK and other places that were able to, because they're smaller, in some cases a little more efficient, or don't have their population so dispersed, as say a place like the United States, where it's a massive country with people broadly dispersed, and with heavy, heavy concentrations of humans in some of the big cities, these things take a while. And so in the United States, we're seeing now roughly a quarter of a billion U.S. residents, in other words, over 250 million U.S. citizens have been vaccinated, at least half of those fully vaccinated. So massive, significant progress since late, since December of 2020,

primarily with Pfizer and Moderna, with also several millions of doses of J&J Janssen out there. We're starting to see some slowing of the vaccination, where it was up to 4,000 doses administered roughly per day to probably somewhere about half that, partly because so many people have been vaccinated, in part because those that are left unvaccinated, they're having to have mobile units go. They're more dispersed populations,

more isolated groups or individuals. And then you see some reluctance, some those that still don't believe that the COVID-19 disease can be very serious for many people. Those that are hesitant about vaccines or in particular, one of these vaccines, even though they've gone through all the rigorous testing that any therapeutic or vaccine ever has, in fact, even more. But it continues globally, over 1.25 billion humans vaccinated so far. So we see a lot of progress being made around the world with strict monitoring. Again, just very, very, very few dose examples of individuals that responded negatively to the vaccine, very rare and isolated. I understand from the latest that

we've been reading and studying here, we're also seeing that there are some data out on some of the J&J people that were passing out that a great percentage of those very significant turned out to be sort of emotion and other factors rather than the actual vaccine itself. And we know the brain and the mind are very powerful. So we're seeing too how the pandemic is shaping. TSA just announced recently, the Transportation Administration, that we are still looking at mandatory mask-wearing onboard aircraft until at least September 13th and less than until other guidance countermands that, which still has an effect. But we're starting to see countries around the world opening up for visitation in commerce by vaccinated americans and others that have been vaccinated

we're seeing two on in different local businesses universities where we are that are now allowing if both parties or multiple parties are fully vaccinated minimum of two weeks past their second vaccination or full vaccination, then they can be in a room, can meet without mask and things like that. So we're starting to see the fruits of the vaccination. And people have talked about you can, the only way to really get out of an epidemic or certainly a pandemic is really going to be through the vaccines. So because of the dramatic progress, we see that there are still 277 vaccines in development, 93 of which are in human trials, phase one, two, or three. So massive amounts of research and development still going on for Gen 2, 3, and 4

vaccines, at least 48 in phase one human trials, safety and efficacy. Two, phase two, we've got 36. Phase three, 27 candidates. A few more just moved into that phase three. Several are wrapping up and data are starting to be scrutinized by outside independent researchers, by panels, and by US FDA and others. So we've still got the six with the emergency use authorization and eight that are fully approved around the world. We're hearing a lot about research and development around other types or other vectors that might be used for the vaccines, patches, pills, nasal mist, things like that being combined with influenza or flu vaccines in the

future the concern is that if if too many people just refuse to be vaccinated protect themselves and others that because of variants that that are they turn into sort of variant factories that there's concerns that the U.S. would not reach herd immunity and that COVID-19 might become endemic like a cold. In other words, it's here. People are getting sick from it every year from now on. So it's sort of another one of those decisions where an individual can make a difference and certainly large groups. So the U.S. Army has some really exciting research. They've been doing on a vaccine candidate that cuts across all the variants that are emerging in the future. But again, that's many, many moons away.

They've not gone into human clinical trials, my understanding. The therapies for those that are not vaccinated, they get sick. Some of them very seriously or those that somehow they get sick because they're the four, 5, 6% that may still, even if vaccinated, antibody and antiviral therapies continue. Pfizer's heavily into now, I believe, a phase three trial of an antiviral pill that has some unique combination. But these, again, are therapies that would potentially be either intravenous like the Vax or like many of the antibodies that are being trialed right now or antivirals or even a pill. So stay tuned on that. A little bit about now moving over to LPRC. A few significant dates.

Impact. LPRC impact. This is probably our 17th one. We typically average a little over 400 executives come into Gainesville or in the past hosted by different retailers to their venues. It looks like Gainesville will be a physical event with some online or virtual components to it. Again, everybody's standing by so that all content could be delivered completely virtual if need be. But Impact October 4th, 5th, and 6th,

primarily on all day the 5th, half day on the 6th with a lot of people coming in on the 4th on that Monday into Gainesville. So those have not experienced LPRC Impact. It's really like no other. The venue is totally unique compared to most conferences or events that we go to. And then it's not a hotel or a entertainment complex, but rather has all the components of that, but has this big, large,

beautiful campus, lively with students and faculty and a lot of research and a lot of interesting things going on. Tours of our five physical LPRC labs plus a tour of the living lab, the innovation hub block. So a lot of really neat things that we're going to be doing here. Some really exciting social components of 2021 LPRC impact being planned right now as we speak. The content has already been identified and laid out. Speakers are now being identified and prepped. Kenna and her team are working on this. They're also, though, working on two upcoming summits before that. On June 1st, the Violent Crime Working Group's annual summit will be virtual still due to the continuing pandemic effects, as well as budgetary effects

for many of the members. But stay tuned for more detailed information. It goes to the LPRC website at lpresearch.org for information on the LPRC Violent Crime Summit, which again will be live on June 1st. We also have our Product Protection Summit, which is in heavy planning right now. I saw some of the information yesterday that Corey Lowe, Dr. Lowe, is preparing for that Product Protection Summit. It's going to be pretty neat. It's going to be sort of like what we did in the past, our Solution Innovation Programs, SIPs, where we have sort of like what we did in the past, our solution innovation programs, SIPs, where we have sort of grading criteria and people can do to a certain extent the sharks, but go way beyond that. We're going to be going into what's the mode of action? How does this

presumably work to affect an individual or the loss or whatever the theft that we might be looking for? What are different ways, ways to improve it, what's the survivability or durability in the real world, and so on. So there'll be a lot of criteria. But look for that, criteria, so look for that on July 16th. July 16th will be the LPRC Product Protection Summit. We've also got some webinars. This month we've got our Solution Partner Planning Day webinar coming up.

It's an opportunity for SPs only, but some of our retailer board of advisor members will be on there. But we're going to do a real deep dive with our solution partners and really help them better understand all the new capabilities we've gotten or developing here at LPRC to solve problems, how the best ways to engage and sponsor across the community. Again, we've got over 86 annual engagement points for our members, which includes 70 working group calls across the seven groups, 10 meetings each. We've got a minimum of 10 webinars, which are now be going to probably about 14, it looks like, webinars.

And then, of course, six live events eventually again, but we've got at least six events on top of that, as well as fusion net engagements and so on. So a minimum of 86 engagements. So we're going to show, do deep dives with all of our solution partners over 65, almost 70 of them to help them better understand and engage with the LPRC. So that's what I've got so far. I'm going to go over to my colleague and friend, Tony D'Onofrio, to talk about the globe in general. Go ahead, Tony, if you will. Thank you very much, Rita.

An excellent update and congrats on all the great stuff that's going on at LPRC. And I always appreciate the COVID updates. Let me start this week with some somber news. So far this year, 119 law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty. That's up 20% on 2020. 63 of those deaths were from COVID, which tells you the pandemic is still around, and 19 were from gunfire. The average age was 50, and the average tour of duty for the ones that were killed so far this year was 19 years. So sobering statistics in these challenging pandemic times. challenging pandemic times. Speaking on the pandemic, Statista updated the latest in terms of the countries that are leading full vaccinations. As of May 1st, the countries with the

full vaccination of their population, the leader is still Israel, with 59% of the population fully vaccinated, followed by Chile at 35%, Bahrain at 32%, U.S. as of May 1st totaled at 31%, and U.K. and Serbia came in fifth at 22%. Switching gears, Amazon announced their quality results this past week, and amazing results they were. Sales soared 44% to $108.5 billion.

They also guided that they expect the second quarter to be just as good. Web Services, which is their most profitable division, had net sales of $13.5 billion, up 32%. Amazon also has a new division underway called Advertising. They're selling a lot of advertising through their website. They don't actually disclose what the advertising category is, but it's listed on the other. But that revenue was up 77% to nearly $7 billion. Prime Video on your television is turning 10 years this year. There is over 175 million Prime members

that have streamed movies this past year, and streaming for Prime is up 70% this year. The company, and this is the one that was most amazing to me, added 50 million Prime members. So these are those loyalty members that pay $119 a year. There are now 200 million people that have subscribed to Prime to get that free shipping. During the quarter, what's also interesting, Amazon international sales are growing faster than US sales. International sales were up 60%. North America sales were up 40%. So an amazing quarter by Amazon. And that Amazon is one of the big five tech companies or the big tech companies that are doing extremely well in their quality results. So the pandemic has been good for all the big tech companies. Profits in the last quarter were up 110% to nearly $24 billion. Google or Alphabet profits were up 162% to $18 billion.

Microsoft was up 44% to $15 billion. Facebook was up 94% to $9 billion. And Amazon was up 220%. So again, substantial profits in these big tech companies as a result of the pandemic and how our habits change. Retail also is coming out and coming out very strong. Some new research study that was just published on consumer demand around the world from the IHL group.

And what that study said that while the U.S. is ready to boom 12 months post-COVID, the rest of the world is about three to 12 months behind what the U.S. is doing in terms of what consumer are telling us. I would actually detract from that study a little bit and add that China is actually ahead of the U.S. in the recovery. China's economy, for example, grew a record 18% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the second quarter last year. And it was the biggest jump in GDP since China started tracking these numbers in 1992. But overall, all U.S. is doing extremely well and coming out of the pandemic strong in retail. From March 2020 to March 2021, the higher income had not kept up on spending the previous levels, kept up on spending the previous levels, while middle to lower income have kept spending close to previous levels due to the stimulus payments. IHL says that this is about to change in a big way.

Call it revenge buying, call it pent-up demand, or just get out and spend. Both the U.S. consumers are ready to spend and spend on everything from the essentials to discretionary categories. There is a great demand now for eating out, which might actually surpass capacity for restaurants to meet it. The national restaurant news suggests that 30% of the nation's restaurants close permanently in some regions due to COVID-19. Lower employment would also make it difficult to find workers, so prepare for lines as restaurants open up. Further, households with income over 50 grand are planning to increase budgets significantly to higher dining, entertainment, and travel. So if you want airline tickets, you might want to get them sooner rather than later because prices are going up.

IHL also sees that clothing is coming back. We believe that clothing numbers are understated. If people get out for entertainment and travel, new clothes won't be purchased, and by the fall, it's expected all schools and universities will be back, and they're going to be buying clothes. Across the board in every region, it's expected that the budget to increase for in-store essentials, the greatest growth by far will be North America with the percentage of the bodies that bought in store will go from 61% to 69% in the next 12 months. It's a 13, nearly a 14% increase. The rest of the world is a bit more modest, 6.4% in growth in Latin America, 5.6% in Europe, and 5.5% in all of Asia Pacific. But again, I will consider

China the exception. And digital orders, which these habits were created online, IHL forecasted a lot of those will continue. Prior to the pandemic or at the start of the pandemic, they projected that only 35% to 45% of the digital habits will continue. Now they're projecting that 91% of those habits will continue. So buy online, pick up in store, curbside retail, all those things we've been talking about, they're here to stay. here to stay. And then finally, in terms of comparing last March to this March in the U.S. and how we're doing, sales were actually down. So the spike in food is down 10%, but we're up 8% in drug, up 8% for mass merchandise, up 31% for department stores, up 105% for specially soft goods, which includes apparel, up 38% for specially hard goods, up 36% for convenience, up 35% for restaurants. So an excellent month, March 2021, for retail, which overall was up 21% on last year. So off to a really strong start

as we start come out of the pandemic. So in summary this week, let me start with what I said at the beginning. It is shaping up to be a tough year for the law enforcement and you need to stay current by following us on FusionNet and what's happening in LPRC.

The world is making progress on vaccination, but as Reid said, there are some countries that are struggling, like India, which could cause more variants, which could elongate the crisis. Amazon, to me, is forever changing where retail goes next. Big tech is going well, but I do think I would expect changes ahead in terms of what happens to big tech, but all the world that's going, all the challenges that are being,

they're facing going forward. And retail is back, baby, and it's going to get stronger as the year progresses. So that's good news for a lot of the listeners to this audience. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tom. Thank you lot of the listeners to this audience. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tom. Thank you, Tony. Thank you, Reid. And I'll start off with just kind of a quick update. The first week of May with May Day and some other things was a very active week globally when it comes to protests. And I would say outside the U.S., there was probably a tremendous amount more than what we would commonly see. So, for instance, Berlin had its largest riot in the last 10 years.

Throughout Europe, there was quite a significant amount of civil disturbance. So in the U.S., we continue to see a trend, although I would say it is somewhat in pockets as opposed to everywhere. May 5th is actually the anniversary of Kendra James's unfortunate shooting. And that occurred back in 2003 in Portland. So there is a tremendous amount of chatter in that area of this 10-year anniversary. Sorry, not this 10-year anniversary, this anniversary of that shooting. So right now, on all of the Portland kind of telegram channels, they're talking about, you know, more civil disturbance. I think Portland has had pretty consistent

events over the past several months, but this is an event where they're starting to organize and it does not look to be well. And that shooting, you know, I did a little bit of, I did a little bit of reading. I don't actually have a lot of details on it, but it was a passenger in a car that had a warrant where a um, was dragged in the car. And, uh, at that time there wasn't any body cam fitted footage. And there were a lot of unanswered questions and what exactly occurred. It was a single gunshot wound that led, um, to the death. And there was, uh, for the last few years, kind of this, uh, re revitalizing that and bringing that up and remembering the name. So I would expect in the Northwest that there would be some activities specific to that.

And I don't normally get regionally specific, but I thought it warranted in New York City, there has been kind of, I would say a large amount of, and I don't actually, this is not what I would say is common civil disturbance, where there are large groups of dirt bikes and motorcycles being driven through the city. I believe on the 29th, it was the 29th in Brooklyn, there were these, a group of motorcycles, about 300 people went in to buy the Brooklyn Bridge and started to dance and sing and it led to some arrests. Brooklyn Bridge and started to dance and sing. And it led to some arrests, relatively nonviolent, but certainly civil disturbance nonetheless. And I would continue to focus, if you're a member, get into the FusionNet, listen to what people are saying. If you can't attend the calls, sometimes everybody can't attend the calls, at least see what's, you know, out there. And there's a lot of great information. You know, there was a lot over the weekend related to May Day. There was a lot of

civil service throughout the world again. But I think there's a lot of great information on the FusionNet and the information sharing continues. And I would say that we do still continue to see some hot spots that feel like every day there's something going on. There is a little bit of organized chatter around a larger event that was going to occur this weekend, but I've seen all of that kind of fizzle out where I think it was the follow-up to the May Day protests outside of the U.S. There's certainly a significant amount of civil disturbance in a couple pockets, but that generally doesn't bleed over to the United States. I know that's not the best word choice, but it generally doesn't flow over the United States because they're usually centered around the government and there

isn't really a clear connection there. stay tuned i do think we're going to continue to see this um kind of uh civil disturbance throughout the next several months um you know there are a lot of theories and people talking about you know coven and coven fatigue and how it's fueling the fire but i think with all of the events that are occurring and some of these unfortunate shootings and some of these justified shootings you know there are things that um come up and it is a it kind of restarts the initiative through it so um we'll definitely stay tuned just switching gears very quickly on the cyber security side of things i think it was last week or the week before we talked about the importance of updating your phones apple has released another critical update for your iPhone.

If you have an iPhone and you haven't updated it in the last three days and you don't have automatic updates on it, you want to do that. This is not a bad thing. There was a lot of chatter about throughout the cybersecurity forums, both public and news about why is this occurring? Well, as the iPhone becomes more popular, there are more people looking at it and trying to attack it. This is very common. This is also why Windows PCs and Microsoft Windows has the most vulnerabilities there. It's the most widely used. While Apple is not the most widely used, it is a higher end phone and is a prettier target, if you will, that's out there. So go ahead and take care of that patch.

If you're listening to this today on your iPhone and you haven't patched it, take the half an hour. You know, you need to do it. It's going to protect you. And the vulnerability, while Apple is being somewhat tight-lipped, is actively being sought. So it means people are actively going out and using it. Another iPhone thing that came up this week,

and I think it warrants a quick conversation, but not a huge conversation. And this is just because it did hit, if you read any of really anybody, any of the tech sector, there was a German researchers that had bought this up once before a few years ago about vulnerabilities related to airdrops. So those folks who use Apple iPhones that use aDrop to transfer things, there was a vulnerability. So it was now, in my personal opinion, this is not the LPRC or control text opinion.

I think that this AirDrop vulnerability is somewhat at this point, unlikely to affect an average user. It requires quite a few steps and it requires action on the user as well. But basically what it does is it takes advantage of the way Apple looks to see if someone's in your contacts, if you have airdrop for contacts only. And it requires an action on your part and then basically could allow someone to actually go in. Again, my opinion here is while there's a lot of news around this, it's a little, it is unlikely that this would occur because of the amount of action, but a good safe bet and easy thing to do to

stop it is just, again, if you have your iPhone, pick it up and turn AirDrop off and only turn it on to context only when you're using it. It's a very simple fix. I think the majority of users use AirDrop on purpose. They know when they're using it. So the extra 15 to 20 seconds to turn it on would eliminate the risk there. Additionally, we continue to see nation state sponsored attacks. There were three other alleged Russian and two other alleged Chinese attacks recently. So this continues to plague the most modern developed countries. This is not just a US thing. The UK, Australia,

United States, and then a subset of a whole bunch of other countries are seeing a significant amount of tax. At this point, it's information only. I think the answer is always going to be the same for me is to use two-factor authentication. Don't click on links or enter your credentials into anything and patch. If you do those three things, you're doing everything you can do as a business person or a consumer, quite honestly. And the reality is if you do those things that you're going to be better than the majority. But if you don't do all three of those things, then you're at risk. And I know we consistently say that. And the reason we consistently say that, as we know, education and awareness is what leads to success. That's why we talk about the LPRC, why the LPRC is so important, because it's about education and awareness and using science to help deliver methodology. So without that, I know I don't have a lot today. I will turn it over to Reid.

All right. Thanks so much, Tom, on all that information. Same to possibly be approved. It's almost imminent here with 12 to 15-year-olds, so that can help a little bit with some of the transmission, it sounds like, opportunities there to reduce that. So thank you both for that. Tony, very sobering on the numbers of law enforcement officers killed. It's staggering in a lot of ways, And many of you know with LPRC, we're always looking for very constructive ways to interface, to partner and engage with the community. At the block level, we're studying even block segments, much less neighborhoods,

but also working with law enforcement. Traditionally, very strong partnerships on organized retail crime in certain areas of the country, in certain areas in different states. Continue to improve that, but with lower and lower numbers of law enforcement officers available due to retirement and restricted activities and some of the things that are happening out there, it's making it more and more difficult. But we were honored and privileged to have an assistant chief of police from Port St. Lucie, Chief Del Toro, come in to LPRC last week, spend some time with us brainstorming community engagement and what we're kind of calling community engagement aiming points or keep maybe. But what are ways that we can positively engage with areas where groups of offenders are clustered, where they reside? Are there opportunities there to maybe flip the script a little bit and work in those

areas in a very positive way in working with health care support, with training options for jobs, for different ways to think about in a longer term view, view the world and future orientation and so forth. So stay tuned on more of that. But I want to thank everybody today for joining us, Tommy and Tony D'Onofrio, Mita and Diego, and to all of you out there, please stay safe and let us know your questions, your comments, your ideas, suggestions at lpresearch.org and specifically at operations at lpresearch.org. So stay safe. Thanks. 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 Loss Prevention Research Council.