LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 61 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Covid-19 Variants May Start to Spread With Lack of Vaccines in Vulnerable Countries! The US Department of Justice Investigate a Testing Scam! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including the Vaccine Efforts are Promising in the US, Digital Commerce Grows and Delivery Time Decreases, Information Sharing During the Capital Riot Was Inadequate, The Largest Meat Operators in the US Suffered a Cyber Attack, and Fake Vaccinations Were Sold Online. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 61 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 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 Podcast by LPRC. This is the latest in our weekly update series. This is the latest in our weekly update series.

Today, I'm joined by Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, our partners, and our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on around the U.S. and the world that can affect particularly retailing, but life in general. So we're talking a little bit about, obviously, the coronavirus that comes from SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 disease. And what we're talking about is looking at the effects now. The United States looks like roughly 76% of those over 65 have been fully vaccinated, which should be substantial. And different states had different tactics. I know Governor DeSantis' strategy based on conferring with medical people, including at UF, was to race to the clusters of those most vulnerable, again, to serious disease and even fatalities.

And that would be the very elderly, but where they're clustered together, which creates a highly infectious and dangerous state. And that would be a lot of the care homes that we've got, assisted living facilities and so forth, enlisting the help of public supermarkets and others, and then moved out very rapidly with mobile units and other ways to get those. So it looks like though across the United States, that's a very good sign. But another one is that 64% roughly of those over 18 in the United States have now been vaccinated. So we're getting there. We're getting there rapidly. If you think again, that's just a little over a year since we even heard of this serious virus.

But what we're also seeing, it looks like as I go through the literature and some of the articles that are out there, and that is that teens hospitalization, they've been able to compare that with seasonal influenza or flu and still three times higher. So again, we see that this can be very serious disease and we just can't always predict it. We know the risk factors that typically are prognostic, but not always. And that still the serious disease level and even fatality levels of the non-vaccinated remain at the same levels as they were before the vaccines emerged. And so there's this almost false sense of security of the non-vaccinated as they see the vaccinated people out there moving around and not necessarily getting sick, not over 2.2 billion humans have now been vaccinated in one form or another, probably roughly half a billion fully vaccinated, depending on, again, what vaccine they are using. The United States, you know, it looks like now over 303 million

doses administered, which is now meaning probably around 140 to 145 million Americans have been vaccinated. Again, because it started with the most elderly in many areas, or at least those over 18 at this point, we're talking about that's where you come up with almost 65% of adults have been vaccinated. So again, if we go back and look at the strategy, again, the most vulnerable to serious disease and death, then those that are most exposed to the virus, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that's where we looked at healthcare and essential workers, if you will. And then the third strategy is the spreaders, the super spreaders, but particularly those that are individuals that are moving and exposing the others to themselves all the time. And if they happen to have COVID-19,

are viremic and shedding the virus, particularly if they're a heavy shutter, super spreaders, they were called. That's what that strategy was as a reminder there. So exciting stuff that we've gotten so many people vaccinated with such a powerful and unique vaccine type. It looks like there are about 77 preclinical other vaccine options still in development, whether it's just in silico, in other words, computer simulations with these high, high-speed computers. 92 vaccine candidates in clinical trials. Now we're at 51 or now in phase one, excuse me, 34 in phase two. And now we're up to 30 vaccine candidates in phase three, large-scale randomized controlled trials with humans. So all three of those phases. So that's the 92 in clinical evaluation, rigorous clinical evaluation. I think there's been concern about the proposed haste of the development of the existing vaccines,

the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna and so forth. But in fact, the phase one, two, and three trials that were conducted, not just the United States, but in the UK and Europe and other parts of the world where they were replicating and re-replicating. That's the highest level of science I'm aware of as a scientist, where we have rigorous randomized controlled trials, particularly if you go through three different phases. But finally, that you're replicating those clinical trials across the world in all these different types of conditions and so on. So it's actually maybe the most investigated or researched vaccine in history rather than the other way around. Again, Warp Speed, what that did from the prior administration

was provide massive funding to those candidates, most likely and most successful candidates that they could identify at the time, but more importantly, to get ready and start to manufacture the vaccines before anybody knew what the results of the trials might be. So that allowed rapid distribution and so on. Looking at testing for variants, again, there are over 100 different COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 tests available around the world of varying quality and accuracy. We see some of these that are still providing what we call type 1 or false positive errors at a little bit higher rate than you'd like to see, those that are not quite sensitive enough, and so on.

But the fact that we're rapidly having the capability, not just in the UK, which kind of led the world to a certain extent in being able to very rapidly sequence infections throughout the UK and identify variants as they were starting to evolve and then get an idea of where they were traveling to and how and so on, what the vectors were, helped a lot. Now you're seeing that really in many countries, of course, including the United States around the world, that that's going to help us to a certain extent. Even the largest concern right now is this Delta virus that's evolved in India. That variant seems to be one that's got a lot of scientists and physicians very, very concerned. But at the same time, they're seeing that in their data that those that are fully vaccinated, they don't seem to have a real problem with that variant.

It's just more of a problem for those that are unvaccinated. And it seems to be pretty rapidly spreading around the world. So stay tuned to all that. The travel, it's mixed. Tony and I are monitoring, I imagine Tom as well, as we try and go and move around the world to get some things done to protect people and places. But again, if we can just get to that, roughly 70 plus percent adults in the United States, we could move from amber to green travel status for many of these countries.

And so we'll keep everybody posted. But it looks like this, the big summit that's coming up where the G5 and G7 and so on as they add countries in there, that there's going to be a lot of discussion, hopefully a lot of science-informed discussion around what makes the most sense, which countries can start to reconnect in the best way. Because right now, some of the places that we like and need to go, there's still a 10-day quarantine period coming to the United States because we're not quite fully vaxxed yet.

So looking at, there's some other interesting fallouts from what we've experienced in 2020 into 21 with the COVID-19. And that is that at least two very virulent and readily spotted flu variants or strains seem to be almost extinct, possibly haven't been seen in months and months and months. And so again, the idea of everybody separating and masking and so forth, and washing their hands and so on, there's a lot more hygiene going on, that you saw that those that seemed to knock out some of the flu that was circulating. Colds are starting to make a comeback.

And so everybody stand by there. So there are other types of viruses going around. So switching over to LPRC and to research, we're going to start putting out some pictures here pretty shortly of our safer places lab and what we're doing out in the Southwest parking lot, we call it. We've got three live view trailers just now deployed there with all different types of sensors from cameras and aural and so on in that area um we've got a lot of um pretty cool things there we're trying to better understand behavior in parking lots um understand positive, negative, and dead space in those and how

the red guy, the bad guy uses those to take advantage for theft, fraud, and violence in the parking lot area, as well as what is it about positive, negative, and dead space that is scary to the green person, particularly our value chopper employee. So with these live view traders and other sensors and other things we can do with smart lighting, we're looking for very cost-effective ways, things that we can do with the heightened density of vegetation and so on, what those balances might be to make it safer and help the green person, he or she feel and be safer. And then the opposite for the red guy, that person that's

trying to victimize others. So stay tuned on that, but it's pretty neat all that's going on in that Southwest parking lot. And then again, what's going on in the virtual reality field with Dr. Kong and students working with LPRC to create the same environment in a virtual reality way so we can create that learning loop between VR and the real place. And then finally, working with several leading retailers, stores in Gainesville with those parking lots. So now we can start to what's called translational science where we can move things through pathways and create strong learning loops in that same way.

So stay tuned for that. Priming is another area of research that we've been working on for a long time. And you know that with the signage of different types and sizes, we've been working on how that we prime the pump. In other words, get people to look up or to help them see, get, and respect or respond to the stimuli we put out there. In this way, we can also repurpose some protective, preventive technologies that have sort of gone by the wayside or just aren't known or respected anymore.

We think we can bring some new life there through priming. We've added a new scientist on our team, Kenna being Kenna Carlson, our research team leader at the LPRC. Dr. Corey Lowe being another research scientist, but also the innovation team leader. We've added Mackenzie Kushner to the team, another doctoral student finishing up at the University of Florida as a research scientist. So now there are actually four of us that are graduate trained criminologists. It's exciting for me. It's exciting for all of us that what we're now going to be able to get done to support you all out there with good evidence-based practice.

Another reminder that the LPRC Impact Conference is coming up the first week in October in Gainesville, Florida. We're really excited about that. Amazing content, speakers, some cool social events as per normal, some really neat lab tours inside and outside to expose people. There's just no conference I'm aware of, and I've been to them for over 30 years now, like this one in that the content, the experience, just the baseline. And then the 68, 70 top retailers that we work with, all their leading people in here,

as well as 70 leading technologists from our supporters and members from the solution partner realm. So with no further ado, let me go over to Tony D'Onofrio and let's see what we've got going on. Thank you very much, Reed, and great update as usual. Let me start with an update on LPRC Europe. The planning continues as you are correct. We are monitoring travel to see if we can get into Europe in July. The date has been set as July 21st for a retailer meeting in London,

co-hosted with TJ Maxx or TK Maxx, as they call it in Europe. Planning continues. A survey will go out to actually get priorities from the Europeans in terms of what they want to focus on. So we're looking forward to that. But it starts with the borders actually opening up. And that's what we monitor every day. So Rita, I appreciate those articles you sent this morning. It looks like there is some discussion going on. So my gut tells me that

things will open up by July 21. And this event will take place. So let me switch to some updates from around the world. And I'm going to start actually with a Boston Consulting Group executive perspective series. And this one is titled How to End the Global Pandemic in 2022. Their view is that the COVID-19 recovery will be driven by disease progression, the average economic impact, government policies, and business and public responses. One of the concerns that they have, and it is a concern that actually I expressed early on in one of my videos, and they say there's 100x discrepancy in vaccination rates between high income countries and low-income countries. And there are 2.7 billion people in countries where it will take several years to finish

initial round of vaccination, which would lead or could lead to exactly what Reid was talking about, which are variants. As an example of how fast the variants can spread, it took less than six months for the B.1.1.7 to spread from one country to 120 countries. So we're in a race right now to globally minimize variants. And cases are still high, especially in low-income countries. And the resurgence that Reid talked about in India is concerning. Based on the current plans, the Boston Consulting Group thinks that it will take until 2024 to emerge fully out of the pandemic. As some lower-income countries are severely behind in vaccination.

The irony of all this is that we will actually reach the supply needed for the world in 2021, but a lot more work needs to be done on distribution, especially to those low-income countries. There also is a challenge on vaccine hesitancy around the world, according to the Boston Consulting Group. In France, I was surprised it's 41%. In Germany and Japan, it's 26%. This was a shock. In Russia, it's 58%. In South Africa, it's 36%. And even in China, which has been extremely aggressive, Even in China, which has been extremely aggressive, vaccine hesitancy is 20%. So a lot more needs to be done, especially in those low-income countries, to actually get the pandemic under control. Let me switch topics now and look at how e-commerce will conquer 2021 and beyond, and what are some of the barriers to the continued growth of e-commerce?

And this data is from Recondeur. In the first quarter of 2021, digital commerce growth grew 58%. A major challenge for digital commerce is that we are not happy. We're waiting for our stuff. And consumers, in other words words hate to wait and the amount of time that we wait varies around the world it is going down but it's going down slowly so for example in the uk it takes 2.55 days in 2019 to get our goods that dropped to 2.54 in 2020. U.S., it was 3.35 in 2019. It dropped to 3.12 in 2020. Germany, 2.42, dropping to 2.5, actually went up slightly in 2.5. So again, the stuff is coming, but not fast

enough for some of us who just want to just go to the store and get instant gratification by picking the item on the shelf. And that, again, is good for physical stores in terms of what they're able to do. Consumers are also concerned about online fraud. 72% are worried where their personal data is being stored and who has access to it. 71% are concerned that websites may not have adequate security measures and the hacks that happen periodically that Tom talks about a lot don't help. And 60% are unsure who will be held accountable if a fraud occurred. if a fraud occurred. The top five reasons why we buy products online is, 53% is free delivery, 41% coupons and discounts,

35% of what I said last week, refused by other customers or friends, and 33% is a clear return policy, and 20% easy online checkout. And finally, just this past week, I did a new article on computer vision. The article is titled, Visualizing a More Profitable Computer Vision Future of Retail. And this was actually inspired by a couple of things. I spent some really good quality time with actually an LPRC, very active member, looking at the work that they're doing to go

from one application to some really cool, innovative, disruptive computer vision applications. I've also been following very, very closely the hype cycle for artificial intelligence that Gartner's plays, just publishes every year. And in 2020, they put computer vision at the trough of disillusionment, really going into it, but coming out in two to five years, doing an explosive growth. Based on what I saw just from the company that I spent that quality time with, and just from starting the industry, I think that computer vision is accelerating. And that can be seen, again, by all the work that's going on with computer vision at LPRC. In the other key trend that's driving all this, as I said multiple times across many articles, in 2021, we will reach 1 billion cameras installed around the world.

So all those cameras which started out to protect theft and crime, now have become data gathering devices. So there's now 1 billion of these this year that will do a lot of data gathering. The applications that I talk about for computer vision in the articles include inventory visibility, cashierless stores, and merchandising. Those are the top three. The costliest to implement right now is cashierless stores. And again, speculation was that, for example, an Amazon Go cost a million dollar plus in the past to initially the plant, but that cost is coming down. The easiest to implement, by the way, is inventory visibility. The market will grow from $2.9 billion in 2018 to over $33 billion

by 2025. And I recently just published RIS news reports as a 10% retailers have started a major upgrade of their computer vision solutions and nearly 17% will start in the next 12 to 24 months. Self-checkout is one of the key applications. We talked about Amazon Go. There's now 30 Amazon Go's opened in the United States. In addition to self-checkout, There's a lot of focus on product availability and inventory. Studies show that consumers encounter a lot of stocks in one out of three shopping trips, which cost the industry $1 trillion. So getting the inventory correct is very, very important.

And in fact, it's becoming even more important because of COVID, because the stores are actually becoming fulfillment centers. I also think, and again, LPRC is a good place to learn about it, that computer vision is going to have some great applications in retail loss prevention. in retail loss prevention. The machines could actually learn, identify patterns, and even identifying folks that are stealing and how they're stealing, and over time actually secure processes. And again, you see multiple successful applications already at this in retail.

So in summary, I think it's an emerging technology, but its growth is exploding. And I do think it's going to be a major, major solution, including covering things like inventory management, loss prevention, marketing, store layouts, and much more. So I do think it's going to be a very profitable future of retail as these cameras provide data to actually improve store operation. And I also think that our PRC is a good testing lab to learn for those green and red shoppers and how the computer vision can shape the future of retail. So that's my update this week.

Let me turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Tony. And thank you, Rita. Just to kind of echo, I completely agree with Tony in the computer vision front. I also would like to highlight, you know, those billion IP cameras dramatically increase your digital risk footprint. And we consistently every week talk about cyber attacks. And the more network devices you have, the more software, the more susceptible you are to it. I don't think they're going away. Cyber attacks, I think we just have to always be mindful of that digital risk

protection footprint. And it isn't about just the IT folks anymore. So just quickly wanted to touch on the FusionNet. And I know we talk about it every week. And it's really the kind of active intelligence landscape for the LPRC. And, you know, we use a platform to communicate openly with members and law enforcement about civil disruption, weather and other events. And I thought it was pertinent to really talk about in the last 24 hours, the Justice Department, it's actually a joint report was released, 127 page report. The Justice Department, it's actually a joint report, was released, 127-page report, a very comprehensive overview about some of the events surrounding the Capitol riots on January 6th. And one of the highlights, and all the federal agencies together put this, is that there was a failure to adequately warn law enforcement of an event that occurs. And when I read this and I did not read the whole report, I just was able to get snippets of it. It really was about the intelligence was available, but wasn't distributed appropriately to the right levels. And immediately I thought about the fusion net and how important it is and how much success we had, because what the fusion net allows is for anybody on their own time to go

ahead and take a look at what other people are saying. There is some self-validation, there is some group validation, but if we backtrack to some of the events that occurred in the last year, the fusion net was a place where we were communicating openly and that source of intel was there. So it really reaffirms the importance of the fusion net and how in you know, in this circumstance, I would say we were ahead of federal government. I think actually, I recall being on a call the week before and talking about the potential disruption in the capital and hearing retailers talking about boarding up and protecting their buildings and

their people at that time. So kudos to the Laws Prevention Research Council for having it and being so effective because in some cases we were ahead of law enforcement and the federal government of what was occurring. And that could only be achieved by the members participating. So I know that we are in some tough times still and we still see civil disruption, but I can't stress enough the importance of you're a member and you're not, don't have

someone on your team involved to, you know, pick the phone up, send an email, get involved, get on the platform and share information. Switching gears to kind of some cyber incident or cyber attack information. So on Memorial Day weekend, the largest meat producer in the U.S. suffered a cyber attack information. So on Memorial Day weekend, the largest meat producer in the US suffered a cyber attack, JBSSA. They are the largest meat marketer in the world. And they had to shut down their US operations. They produce about 20% of the beef for the United States.

But it's important to note that this attack affected their Australian and Canadian plants as well. And it just further really talks to the importance of understanding the impact that some of these cyber attacks have. When you think about meat manufacturing and infrastructure, that these attacks spare no one and can have longstanding impacts. And although this particular attack had minimal disruption, according to JBSA, it shows what the susceptibility is to some of these organizations of just imagine if they were down for weeks at a time, what would the impact would be on the cost of goods as well as the distribution? And then the challenge of potential safety hazards. When you think about connected devices in today's day and age, it's not uncommon for

everything to be connected. So imagine a world where a hacker goes in and changes temperature settings on refrigeration units, what the risk could be, the risk of the sanitation processes that are automated or even the testing processes. So in this particular attack, it is caused a little bit of a shutdown. We're not necessarily seeing a long-term effect. The White House was involved and said they're monitoring, but we continue to see this huge amount of attacks on public and private and government entities. And it is in the thousands of day. Similarly, talking about, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on it because I know it's repetitive, the Colonial Pipeline attack. But I think it is important to talk about that the FBI seized 63 Bitcoin.

And what does 63 Bitcoin mean? $2.8 million that was part of the $4 million payout to the Colonial Pipeline was seized by the FBI. Why is this important? Because one, it shows that the US government is going to aggressively go after folks that attack infrastructure or large big business. It also shows that Bitcoin, however anonymous or safe you think it is, is not as safe as everyone thinks. And what I often say is if any of the governments, ours or anybody, puts their resources to it, they can accomplish just about anything technologically.

So this seizure is not the first time Bitcoin was seized, but it was a very quick seizure. And the point here is to really go aggressively after these bad actors. And the group that was responsible for the Colonial Pipeline attack, the dark side has basically closed up shop. They don't appear to be, while they are Russian and these are government backed. So I suspect in the upcoming weeks, we'll hear about how these members are caught. There's a method of when you're not affiliated with the government and you're drawing attention to the government, somehow you turn up and you end up in US customs or US government hands. So a lot more to come in

that. But one thing that did have impact here was after the seizure within about 40 minutes, the Bitcoin price dropped. Now, can you directly correlate it to it? Not necessarily. But what's important to note here is that our government is taking very strong stances against it. And this actually next story is the Justice Department has really said that they're going to elevate ransomware attacks to be on par with terrorism attacks. So the Department of Justice hasn't really said what they're going to put in place from an actual crime level, but what they've talked about is elevate the investigative process. And I think if you think of what I just talked

about in the FBI and the seizure for cybersecurity, it's a perfect example of we're going to treat this with the same level of terrorism, which if it doesn't serve as the term value to the bad guys, it should, because we're going to come after you. And when the U S intelligence agencies and law enforcement, federal law enforcement puts their full resources behind something. As everybody probably knows as a listener, they can do things remarkably well. So this is a big win, I think, for all of us, all the listeners here that it's the Department of Justice taking the approach of we're going to take this significantly serious. I know we'll see some legislation and some things occurring based on some of the recent attacks to elevate the level

of crime, elevate the investigative process, increase the deterrence process, as well as regulation around how money transfers to make it more difficult. And I think it's the see it, fear it, get it mentality of LPRC taking that same approach towards this, where making sure the bad guys see what's occurring, they're afraid of it, and they understand what the consequence is. So we'll continue to keep everyone updated on that. Switching gears to the COVID front, a couple of different COVID stories. The Department of Justice last week announced that they had a case where they prosecuted folks all over the country, Florida, California, about a dozen people in connection with a COVID-19 testing scam where there was $150 million in false billing medical

claims made. And this just goes to kind of what we always talk about that when there is an event that nefarious actors take advantage of it. In this case, there were arrests made and they're basically taking advantage of the Medicaid and Medicare system for millions of patients and charging for tests that never occurred. The investigation spanned a few months, but was able to get a dozen people arrested. And in this case, they were actually using, from what's available information-wise, they're actually using people's Medicaid and Medicare numbers that were either stolen or taken from breach data to go ahead and process false claims to the tune of, you know, in excess of $140 million. And so when you think about that, it doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it also doesn't sound like a little bit. I think we'll see more of this coming out.

So this was a joint investigation in the Department of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General's and Inspector General Office. It was looking at some anomalies that didn't make sense. So we continue to see scams related around COVID-19. Additionally, and interestingly enough, I don't know if we can get this in the show notes. I'll try to see if Diego can get it. There was on Amazon postings for fake COVID vaccination cards. They were promptly removed. I think it's important to note that Amazon did the right thing. As soon as this analyst put them up, Amazon had them removed very, very quickly.

But I was able to capture some screen captures and get some things. And basically for 1299, you had some fake Amazon cards out there. They're not Amazon, I'm sorry, vaccination cards on Amazon. So the vaccination, we spoke about fake vaccination cards once before,

but now you're starting to see again, what I think we always see is what starts on the dark web comes to the surface web. And now this is kind of a product that if you search, you can find, and the price point's important too, right? It was at $250, $300 when we started. Now you're at $1,299. And this is kind of the natural progression of what we see with things similar to this. So I do suspect that we'll continue to see fake

vaccination cards, fake test results, and this poses a significant risk for all of us because those of us who have been vaccinated, who are afforded different things. So, for instance, I have done some air travel. We're still wearing masks, but I've done quite a bit of travel in the last couple of weeks and have some next week. And having an active vaccination card allows you to get to places you can't. There are several EU countries that are recognizing the Pfizer vaccine card in the US. So Germany is one of them where Germany has a digital passport type.

And if you have a Pfizer vaccination with a CDC card, you can get that in Germany, which allows you to cross border in certain European countries. Think of the risk here of these fake cards and what this poses for us. So I do believe that we'll continue to see it. I also believe that we'll continue to see law enforcement going after this. And I think the verdict is out of how it'll be addressed from the selling side. And then last on the COVID front, again, I don't think this is new news, although there is a significant amount of fake COVID-19 vaccines in Africa. And the Wall Street Journal actually put in a really great article about the fact that the authorities in Africa have seized, you starting to seize quite a bit. And again, I was able to, through my own research, find a whole bunch of places that in Africa

sold vaccines that look very official. But as we all know, the risk of counterfeit vaccines, obviously, you don't know what that injection is. There's a whole bunch of different things occur. And I think it kind of goes to what was said earlier on the podcast is in some countries that are in more challenging economic situations, you see more of this, the more of this risk of this fake vaccine and what some of the things that could occur. There also was a seizure in Poland of fake vaccines. And there

was also another seizure in Europe. And unfortunately, I don't have my notes in front of me where the fake vaccine actually would have caused damage. So it wasn't just a placebo or sugar or saline. It was, you It was a kind of a remedy made. So we're going to continue to see this. Fortunately, we are not seeing this in North America. We are seeing this outside of the United States in a much heavier fashion. And as we say always, when there's a major event, you do unfortunately have the bad actors going to try to take advantage of it. In this case, it poses a significant risk for all of us because folks that think they're vaccinated that aren't obviously could put other people at risk as well as all of the unfortunate things that occur when you do have a bad vaccine or something that isn't what you thought it was. So with that,

I will turn it over to Reid. All right. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you, Tony. Good information. A lot going on. And just wanted to reinforce, like you said, Tom, you mentioned FusionNet and the ability to fuse together decision makers, people in the field, in the different localities that are dealing with all kinds of things, right? The dangerous weather, other acute events as we call them, riots, looting, active assailant, and so on. Even robberies where you can coordinate if you're having a string of robberies. So it's just a nice, simple, free tool to any LPRC member. They can get their teams in there before, during, or after any kind of crisis. Again, in a local level, at the corporate level, they can post open source intel.

They can use the voice channels to communicate with each other in real time, almost like TAC channels in law enforcement and so forth, to stay connected, to share information, to keep each other in real time, almost like TAC channels in law enforcement and so forth, to stay connected, to share information, to keep each other safe through information and ideas. So that's the intent. And again, reinforce what Tony said, too, that the innovation capability now that the LPRC has, and particularly in tandem with leading faculty and students from the University of Florida and beyond, is unprecedented at this point.

We are very excited about LPRC Europe and what's going to take place. We're obviously going to be paying attention to the travel situation, but it's happening. We've got multiple retailers that are very excited about it. And we're excited about it here as well. And I mentioned our newest scientist, Mackenzie. She's helped us draft an instrument or a questionnaire that really let the European retailers, their leaders and others, express exactly what are their current and future needs. How would they like to focus? It's all about, it's all about the member. So everybody I want to thank you, Diego, but I want to thank everybody out there. Stay safe. Keep us informed. LPResearch.org is the website and operations at LPResearch.org is the email address to give us your questions, your comments, your suggestions. So stay safe.

From Gainesville, thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more Crime Science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors

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