LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 62 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

COVID-19 Delta Variant is Spreading Further! LPRC Parking Lot Lab is Active and Stopping Crime! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including the Shift to Grocery Shopping Online, Sleep Patterns are Negatively Changing, Ransomware Attacks Continue to Occur, Anxiety Rises as People Return to Offices, and Maintenance at Self Checkout Needed as Stores Ramp Up. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 62 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

Podcast. Today, our latest in the weekly update series joined by our colleagues, Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, as well as our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on around the world. Always interesting. Looks like just in the United States alone, deaths attributed to the coronavirus, COVID-19 disease, are just about 600,000. Again, time will tell exactly the shakeout on that, but still clearly a pretty deadly disease. And many, many times out around the world globally,

looks like some of the long haul issues continue to be persistent and even longer haul for many than they ever expected. I know that I have some family and friends that are still experiencing months and months and months later, different types of smell deficits or bizarre tastes and things like that. And again, time will tell if there are cardiac and respiratory and other different effects from the COVID-19 disease. So it's for real. It's serious. Fortunately, it looks like the vaccines are helping us navigate out. But as we know, the viruses don't play fair. They're always adapting and adjusting and changing. And even symptoms seem to be changing a little bit because of the variants. And there's a lot of science,

scientific results emerging around this that people under 40, people over 40, even are presenting with different types of symptoms and different symptoms than before, as different parts of our bodies are affected by the virus and the way the virus spreads throughout our body and affects us, as well as the way our body's immune responses, the adaptive innate immune systems adjust and so forth. Worldwide, there have been over 2.5 billion doses of the vaccine administered. There seem to be, right now, we're on pace globally for about 33 million vaccinations per day, pretty impressive. vaccinations per day. Pretty impressive. The United States has roughly 145, closing in 150 million Americans that are fully vaccinated. That seems to be helping dramatically. All kinds of things going on with this new Delta virus variant, which you're talking about, was first identified in India. Seems to be very transmissible, highly transmissible.

Some new research emerging around those that got the J&J, should they consider, since it's a one-dose adenovirus vector, should they look at getting another dose of one of the mRNA vector vaccines or those types of vaccines and so on. It looks like in the UK where they're having particular struggles that perhaps because their strategy at the time seemed pretty powerful of giving everybody one dose so that they more rapidly vaccinate the population than everybody getting two, which would take obviously twice as long, given the same amount of vaccines available to them. With that current, it seemed to work very, very well against some of the variants they were first seeing. Now with the new Delta variant, it seems to require two doses to provide the protection.

And again, we've talked about this, what we're reading and hearing going back, but that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, once the human's exposed to it, are we infected or not is that first point. If we're infected, do we have no symptoms or very low symptoms, asymptomatic or non-symptomatic, if you will, or does it progress in our bodies to present with more symptoms, even including serious disease, all the way to becoming a fatality. And so

that's really the endpoints for these vaccines, just like in our research. What are the endpoints? What are the outcomes that we're looking at? What measures do we use to determine? And so the same thing, if somebody is exposed to the virus, how do they respond to that? Do they generate antibodies or T-cells and the B-cells activated? What does that look like? So that's the immune response. And then finally, though, are they infected or not? And then after that, if they are infected, how serious is the infection? How serious of the disease do they get from it, from that infection? And so the idea being that, again, the one dose may prevent and does seem to very well prevent serious disease, even moderate disease, but may not prevent infection, whereas the two

doses may be preventing us from being infected at all. And so even if we got the different types, so the mixing and matching of vaccines that we know has been tested heavily in the military, in the DOD research facilities now, and a lot of university and civilian settings in the U.S. and around the world to see what does that look like? Does that mix and match provide additional protection? Some of the early research, though, is looking at the endpoint of immune response. They're not efficacy studies, do people get sick or not from that? And so it looks like more to come on that, but it's something for all of us to think about if we've not been vaccinated, of course, or if we got a one-dose vaccine, or we've gotten one dose of a two-dose regimen vaccine, how to think about this and talk with

our physicians about that situation. As the evidence emerges, the logic models are there, but what do the data show? The next thing is looking at, again, how many of these vaccines we've been hearing. Again, I've talked earlier about Novavax seeming very promising. Now they've come out with their release. In the same way, early days, if we go back to last year

in late fall, early winter timeframe with Pfizer and then Moderna coming out and announcing 90 plus percent efficaciousness in their phase three trials, multiple phase three after multiple phase one and two trials and preclinical research. So we're seeing that with Novavax saying 90% against infection possibly, but at least, or 90% against serious disease, 100% against very serious illness. So it looks like Novavax is there. It's not really known. Does the United States need that? This may be a brilliant breakthrough, another powerful, very effective, and very safe vaccine, adding to the dose to the different tools that we've got in our tool chest. But this might be very eligible as a standby in the United States, but as an export vaccine to rapidly get it out to the rest of the

world. And we talked earlier about the rest of the world is hungry for vaccines. We see that there's well over 30 million people a day getting vaccinated around the world, but some of the poorest countries may not have vaccines, but just as seriously may not have the capability of administering vaccines in a mass way. We saw in the United States where we have a huge, huge population and very diverse terrain and so on that it took us quite a few weeks to really start to gear up and be able to be efficient in vaccinating people. So stay tuned on that. But with this new one emerging that's powerful, that's coming out of the phase three trial where we now have 31 vaccine candidates in the large scale phase three trials, 36 candidates in phase two, 50 more candidates in

phase one, and then yet 77 more in preclinical research haven't entered human clinical trials. So again, phase one, two, and three are human clinical trials looking at safety and efficacy, but also dose ranging, trying to understand what dose, how much, how often, how long seems to provide optimal protection, right? So that's where you're looking at those types of trials going on. Looking at the travel, that seems to be still up in the air because particularly with this new Delta variant, who knows what other variants are coming. And scientists and physicians are now unfortunately expecting this new Delta variant, who knows what other variants are coming. And scientists and physicians

are now unfortunately expecting this new Delta variant will be pouring across the United States. So those that are not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated or not vaccinated enough, maybe we could have some resurgence of some disease and some serious, serious problems. Hospitalization rates are going up. Another is for the United States. Of all those hospitalized in the United States in a given time point here recently with COVID-19 disease, almost none had been fully vaccinated or 20 days past their second dose. So, you know, just you're looking at the evidence from different angles,

and that continues to triangulate the data sets there. We call it convergent validity. So some of the latest on COVID-19 and how it's still affecting us here and around the world and what we're trying to do and regain normalcy. We're seeing some of the other viruses start to pop up. We talked about the cold, different types of cold viruses now starting to come back as people are intermingling and are not as distant or masked to block the particles coming out in an aerialized way. So stay tuned for that. Let's continue to use hand hygiene.

Keep a little bit distance if you can, unless you're in a group of fully vaccinated people, especially outside, but even inside. I think looking at some of the violence going on, we now have seen the number of mass shootings is incredible that have been happening in the United States since January, almost unprecedented levels. We continue almost daily, it seems, to read about new mass violence, active killer shooters of different types. LPRC, we talked about. Kenna Carlson and the Violent Crime Working Group have been digging deeply and widely and looking at other studies, looking at our own ways to map, ways to better understand, ways to, of course, earlier and earlier detect that somebody is really problematic. And this is one

of the options they're looking at is to harm other people or kill them. So stay tuned on all that. other people or kill them. So stay tuned on all that. But it seems to be while the odds of it happening at any given location are very, very, very low that it's happening. It's happening in a broad spectrum of places, the types of weapons that are used, the reasons people might be thinking about doing it very widely, the people that are doing it. There's also not a standard profile, if you will, by any type of demographic, even age groups. So it's a very, very difficult issue right now. The United Kingdom and other places where they don't have as many firearms readily available, they're seeing knifings, stabbing incidents continue to increase. And then we're seeing some of the other violence take place. Again, it's always difficult when you're in the heat

of it to understand, is this systematic change or is this just a random spike in events or problems? But of course, we're seeing on airlines, we saw the latest with the Delta off-duty flight attendant who had to be tackled and restrained and then arrested by federal authorities when they diverted to Oklahoma on a flight from LA to Atlanta. So there have been several of those types of events here in short order. So we're all of us trying to work together to better understand etiology or the reasons for these things happening? And then are there aiming points for us to better know and protect against these types of things? So what I'll do at this point, we've got impact, of course, coming up that first week in October,

product protection summit coming up, which is going to be an amazing event coordinated by Dr. Corey Lowe on our team, a research scientist in that product protection working group, which has got strong co-leaders there, where they're going to do a series of evaluations to not only make it interesting and more systematic, but hopefully better and better technologies and results will be coming out of this. And it's sort of what we did when we had conducted four of these SIPs or solution innovation programs before, where we specified performance metrics and what the retailers were looking for, what they really needed, and then describing how what they needed might work to help them, you know, the mechanisms of action. So look forward to that. Supply chain

protection working group, they're in heavy planning. They've got three separate committees in their working group, and you're seeing some of our working groups, again, we have seven of them at the LPRC, starting to have subcommittees that meet either on the same call, they just have a slightly longer call, or separate calls, or both. But a lot of productivity coming out of the working groups, more engagement. Of course, they're much more visual now with the team's calls and the things that we're able to do, a lot of polling and interactions and so on. So it's really exciting to see that. Update on the University of Florida Safer Places Lab we're putting together. We've got some faculty coming in today. as a matter of fact. Here we are

on Tuesday. And we've got more faculty coming in from UF over to the UF Innovate Hub next Monday, a larger group where we've got National Science Foundation, NSF grant or funds for part of community safety, smart cities initiative. And so they're going to come over and we're going to go through what we're doing in the parking lot. We've got different technologies. Thank you. Live view technologies for some of what you're putting, providing to us. We have three of their heavily outfitted live view surveillance trailers in

the parking lot with an array of all types of sensors. And so working on how we're deploying and moving them. And yesterday, as a matter of fact, the local Gainesville Police Department, their detective CID contacted UF, who contacted our team to say that they think that our live view trailers recorded a crime event. And so our team raised to look on the video and provide that video to them. So real world interface, a lot going on that we could talk about. But we want to welcome, by the way, a new research scientist to the team, McKenzie.

And she's coming on. I might have mentioned before, but that provides us now four graduate-level trained criminologists here at the University of Florida. So the amount of science and things that we can get done are just amazing. It's a great team chemistry as well. So never been more excited here in our 21st year at the LPRC. All right, let me, if I could, switch over to Tony D'Onofrio. And Tony, if you could take it away. Thank you very much, Reid.

And again, a very great update from around the world. And I agree with you, that travel is interesting, especially since we're still planning the LPRC Europe. And UK seems to be up and down. So we'll have to see. But let me jump to some good news that actually came out of the National Retail Federation and was published in Chain Store Age. NRF has revised one of its most closely watched forecasts, and now they're anticipating the fastest growth the U.S. has experienced since 1984. The NRF said on Wednesday that 2021 retail sales

will total $4.4 trillion to $4.56 trillion, up from $4.02, So that's a substantial increase. And the numbers do exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations, and restaurants. So that's pure retail excluding those sectors. The NRF also predicted that GDP in the U.S. is going to approach close to 7% compared with 4.4 and 5% forecasted earlier this year. So what that tells you is retail is coming back in the U.S. and coming back extremely strong. And I do anticipate that the second half of 2021 will be an exceptional year for retail in the United States and some of the other advanced economies

that have made progress on vaccination. So it's good to get those updates from you, Reid, because that's been a driver of the recovery. What has the pandemic done to things like online shopping and where we're at in places like grocery, which had very low penetration? But for this, I go to supermarket news, and they reported this week that about 60% of U.S. consumers now buy groceries online. And the same percentage of these shoppers plan to do the same post-COVID-19. So we love still shopping online. The research basically also lists who are the top places we go and the dominating companies that you would expect.

Walmart and Amazon, although it's interesting that their volumes have dropped when you compare 2020 to 2021. So in the past 12 months, just over 53% of those polled bought groceries from Amazon. That was down 9% and nearly 51% that so on Walmart down 3%, roughly 3%. The next three retailers, they saw their sales online for groceries increase, and they were target which was up 4.5% and 28% of consumers answered that's what they're shopping for groceries. 17% are shopping at Costco for food

items online, up 2%. And additionally, the fifth one is Amazon, part of Amazon. It's Whole Foods. 14.5% are shopping at Whole Foods, and that's up 1.3%. So we are continuing our online shopping habits. Also industry, I seem to have discovered a new disease that's come about because of the pandemic. And this is actually from Infographic Journal and the author called the disease Corona Somnia. So one of the challenges of the pandemic is we're not getting good quality sleep. And this is from MediClick, an infographic journal. Again, they did a global survey of 60 countries. And in those countries, 46% have experienced poor sleep during the pandemic. The causes they cite in their information is we blurred the boundaries between work and personal life.

Forty-two percent of employees report feeling more stressed with remote work during the pandemic. We've had a falling out with the circadian rhythm. We don't know what day is because we're spending all day at home. So we actually have lost really track of time. all day at home, so we actually have lost really track of time. Our sleep is exacerbated by our feelings of fears and loneliness, so we're isolated, and some folks fear exposure to the virus. We also spend a lot more time on those gadget screens, and there's been a 50% increase in mobile data usage during the pandemic. And finally, there is uncertainty, and uncertainty tends to lead to worry. So the constant negative

news that's been going around in the pandemic has not helped. So those are some of the reasons 46% experience poor sleep in those 60 countries. So if we're not sleeping well, how do we feel about going back to the office? Well, again, a recent survey of office workers in five different countries, every single person reported feeling anxious about the idea of returning into in-person work. 56% of respondents in this same study reported that their organization hadn't asked for their opinions about returning to work. And the top five sources of anxiety about returning to work are being exposed to the pandemic or COVID, less flexibility, having to restart the commute to work, wearing a mask, and what to do with that child care. So returning to work, again, in these countries, it's been reported that there's still a lot of uncertainty with that. And let me end with a topic that I follow very closely, which is the Internet of Things,

and where are we with the connectivity and the Internet of Things. And this is actually and where are we with the connectivity and the Internet of Things. And this is actually their annual summary provided by SAFT, which is a battery provider that provides a lot of those Internet devices. And this is their annual 2021 Internet of Things barometer. So how many Internet of Things do we have in the world? So the projection is in 2021, we'll end at 46 billion. That's up from 35 billion in 2020. And that's a 200% increase from 2016, driven by lower IoT hardware costs and the emergence

of cost-efficient private cellular networks. cost-efficient private cellular networks. The total number of IoT devices that are active and expected to grow by 2024 is 83 billion. So 83 billion connected devices by 2024. The industrial sector, which includes manufacturing, retail, and agriculture, will account for over 70% of all those connections by 2024. How has the pandemic impacted IoT? Well, it turns out it has slowed it down. In 2021, the global value of the IoT market is $381 billion,

which is 9% lower than the estimate prior to the pandemic. than the estimate prior to the pandemic. By 2025, the estimated global IT revenue is expected to be 906 billion. The pandemic will actually have wiped out about 200 billion of that value because of all the challenges that we went through. 61% of companies said that the return on investment on IoT projects are significant. 87% said the

changes they made to their core strategy due to the IoT are for the better. And 87% say IoT is now critical for their future success. The benefits recorded in the study for IoT are 50% improvement in productivity, 42% uptime with consistence and reliability, and 34% have seen IoT directly generate new revenue streams. So IoT continues to grow. It has been slowing down a little bit by the pandemic, but again, a good place to experiment with IoT is here at the LPRC for both those green and red shoppers. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom.

Well, thank you, Tony. Thank you, Reid. I'm in California today during taping, so today is the day that the mask mandate goes down. today during taping. So today is the day that the mask mandate goes down. I actually was in a store yesterday and talking to a couple of the managers of the store. And they said that they're still confused. So I know, Reid, there was a group on this of what's going to happen, whether people are going to know and how they're going to enforce this particular location. They're saying that the mandate from their corporate is to still wear masks. So that's an interesting topic. And travel is coming back.

I've been traveling. And I know Tony mentioned Europe. And some of the EU countries are actually recognizing Pfizer for American citizens to actually get what is Germany's version of the digital passport. So definitely moving in the right direction, despite that there are some hiccups through the way. So it's exciting. Definitely for me getting on a plane, this is the second trip in the last 30 days. And listening to the people talk about what to do and what not to do is always interesting. So I wanted to talk a little bit about ransomware. And I think Reid and I exchanged some text messages and our little podcast seems to

be ahead of major news on some of these events, which is really exciting because we do a lot of research and a lot of reading. And we talked about the Colonial Pipeline. We're not going to talk about that today as much, but we're going to talk about a couple other ransomware attacks that are occurring. And this is a really hot topic in the cybersecurity risk space, and it can and probably will affect all of us at one point. And so talk to just about JBS, which is one of the largest meat producers in the world. And we talked a little about this, but they did in fact pay an $11 million ransomware, which is a substantial ransomware. And I think that CEO got a lot of pushback on that, but paying ransomware is a business decision. It's how long you're willing

to stay closed. There is absolutely some risk that you won't get paid, but ransomware and the bad guys that deploy this are business people. And they want people to know that when you pay that they'll give you that code to unlock your information. It benefits them to do that because then it sends the stigma throughout the world that if you pay, we'll give you your code to unlock. And for listeners that don't know what ransomware is, but it's a form of malware that's sent to your computer, generally executed by humans. Someone clicks on something and installs and it actually encrypts all of your files, basically locks them down. And then there's a code that pops up that you start to negotiate with someone on payment. The payment is almost exclusively done in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency.

That's why there's a lot of news around that because it's harder to track. But the reality here is there is a lot of back and forth of whether you should pay. And actually recently in the news, while this is an older attack, the Teamsters Union was impacted back in 2019. This was not an announced kind of event and they refused to pay the ransomware. Some inside sources actually say that normally the FBI does not recommend paying, but in this event, they said that that would be the only way and they stuck to their guns and refused. Additionally, recently in the last couple of weeks, Fuji, Film, Bose, both had taxed and refused to pay the ransomware. If you do have backups and you have capability,

with backups, it's a matter of being out of business for a longer period of time. So this isn't a one size fits all. There are some folks that aren't paying, there are some folks that are paying. And I think from someone that sits in the risk industry, you can't be emotional about it. You really have to look at what the risk is. And a company like JBS, just switching gears back to the meat, said we had four or five factories down and this $11 million allowed us to get right back to business. And in the scheme of things for them, the right business decision was to do that. that. I also think, and we talked a little bit about this, the colonial pipeline and the FBI seizing, you know, almost 85% of that ransomware, that as these, you know, as this continues to happen, the Department of Justice has already made a comment that they will treat ransomware

as the same level of crime as terrorism. Well, when you put the full resources of the United States government behind something, we can do remarkable things like seize Bitcoin, things that on paper are impossible. So I do see that throughout the next six to 12 months, you will see a much greater degree of detail from the FBI going after these cases, really to prove a point that if you attack,

that will come after you. And money is what motivates a lot of these groups. So if you take their money away, it slows the motivation down. But the attack vector of ransomware is off the charts. The growth is almost unimaginable of the amount of attacks that occur. And the reason being is it's a very easy attack for, you know, a criminal to institute. And a lot of times if it's not a spear phishing, which is a directly targeted attack, it's automated. So you have a bot that just sends out thousands and thousands at a time. I think in these bigger ones, you're seeing a much more targeted piece of it. And, you know, just to not to get too far into colonial pipelines, we talked about it

so much, the dark side, the group that was responsible for that case, which was in Russia, which was not Russian government backed, has disbanded and basically went into hiding. In the cybersecurity space, as I said, the full US government, what I would say is those guys can never go on vacation because when they leave the country, they will get apprehended. There's no doubt. And there's also a chance that through back channels, there'll be an agreement made and that these guys will be found somewhere and apprehended because the amount of attention that is driven towards them. And over the years, with a lot of these attacks, five or six years later, someone will go on vacation to the Mediterranean and, you know, they'll be picked up, apprehended,

and then extradited. It actually happens all the time and probably doesn't always make mainstream media. So that's definitely something to think about and look for. Switching gears a little bit, we continue to see, you know, attacks attack, attacks driven towards specific towards retail. So cyber attacks that are driven at the retail industry, especially in the companies in the space where e-com has not been their focus. So where they've pre-pandemic e-com was a smaller channel and then post-pandemic became a larger percentage of their business. We are seeing a much higher degree of attack in that vector. And that has to do with really where the focus is in cybersecurity. Retailers did a really good job of pivoting, which unfortunately does expose retailers to some risk because of the pivot. And we continue to see, however, I think things are

going back to the office, this impact of remote work. And one of the things I think we all have to be mindful of and keep our eyes open for is as we return to the office, that systems potentially could be left unpatched. And when we talk about IoT devices, really, if you think about the modern office today, everything's an IoT device, your phone, really every component that is a connected device. And in some cases, they have not been used in over a year, which is susceptible that there could be a patch missed. So I think you'll see a high degree of focus on making sure things are updated, as well as the risk of when you don't use things for a really long time, and you start them back

up that there are just some functional challenges. I know that in speaking to some personal friends in retail information technology in places that really had long, you know, stores that were closed for longer periods, POS systems having challenges, things of that nature. The moving parts move constantly and then are turned off for six months, creates a challenge of maintenance. So that continues to kind of arise. And then last, but certainly not least, the fusion net. I think we've had a little bit, I don't want to say a large, but we've had a little bit of a low in some of the civil disturbance, but there are still pockets of civil disturbance. There's also this kind of new phenomenon, and I wouldn't say it's new, but in New York City,

I'll use New York City, and then we can talk about some other places where you have these groups of individuals, you know, I would say they're gatherings more than anything else. And like Washington Square Park, where when they, you know, making noise and kind of being disruptive, and then when they're, when the police try to move people along, they erupt into, you know, other challenges. So that continues to be a little bit of a challenge. Washington Square Park is the one that I keep seeing things for, you know. In downtown San Francisco, there are still some things that occur that way. Portland, kind of the places where we continue to see activity. And that's not activity that we talk about that much on the FusionNet. I think I'm going to start to push some things through because it isn't what I would refer to as traditional civil servants. It actually starts off as parties, probably the wrong word, a gathering that gets very large and then gets very rowdy.

And then, you know, kind of at sometimes transitions into a problematic event. So certainly, certainly more to come on that. And then, you know, I touched a little bit on IoT devices. Tony talked about it when we start to reach that 50 billion mark. The challenge with keeping those devices patched and updated. So known vulnerability is on older IoT devices that were not that easy to patch to the newer kind of age IoT devices that in theory have a lot of things built in to patch and update. in theory have a lot of things built in to patch and update. There is this stigma of off-brand, unknown IoT devices, and the unknown when I say unknown, but devices that aren't necessarily manufactured by large manufacturers, the inherent risk of the ability to not update these or to have a vulnerability-prone infrastructure. And in big business, generally, the IoT risk portfolios guard against no name or non-approved devices.

But as we go back to work and plug things in, there is inherent risk of that, and plug things in, there is inherent risk of that, right from the wearables that we wear on our body to the peripheral devices like fancy webcams that move that we bought because of Corona and being at home. A lot of those devices weren't manufactured by huge manufacturers that have strong security portfolios. So that risk is there. And I actually, myself, was given a webcam from someone, really, really neat, fun webcam that followed the body with AI, but has just terrible, terrible security risk inherent in it. I don't even know who made it.

I couldn't really even figure it out. And that's what drove me to kind of look at this and research it. It is probably a problem that we don't really think of, but it is an unintended consequence of the kind of remote work environment of plugging things into your computer that were mass produced, never planned to be produced, and with no nefarious intent, just the fact that these, you know, webcams were made at a rapid rate and deployed and thrown onto Amazon and bought in the masses.

So we'll certainly keep an eye on the risk. I think, you know, it's good news as I travel, I do see the country open and I obviously get to speak to a lot of retailers and business seems to be strong. So back over to you, Reed. All right. Thanks so much. And, you know, it's always instructive to think about the dynamics in play. And as you listen to Tony and Tom describe what's happening and we talked about airline confrontations. Well, that wasn't happening for a while because there were no airline flights or very few.

wasn't happening for a while because there were no airline flights or very few. You also, though, look, we heard about the shift to much more of the commerce going on online and through delivery mechanisms and so on. And so what does that mean? We're going to see the offending, the problems, the losses and things happening in that area, a big shift. But we we're also when you listen to like with the gatherings in Washington Park in in New York City area and so on now you're talking about human clustering and so look at the different dynamics because in these gatherings including I understand in that one people were robbed of their wallets I think there were a stabbing or two excuse me other fights it didn't have anything to do with, you know, some of the bigger issues that have been called out. These are just interpersonal dynamics when

humans get together, unfortunately, and that's why we're all existent. Law enforcement asset and loss prevention and protection. So, but think about the dynamics, how things are changing and where your organization, your enterprise, in your own, in your personal and your family's behavior, organization, your enterprise, and your own, and your personal and your family's behavior. We call it routine activity and how that drives what happens in our lives and how we're exposed to things and how others are exposed to us and our stuff, if you will. So, think about, we think about the dispersal versus clustering in this case and acute issues that arise and as things shift. And then we even talked about the same thing with these medical pathologies. Like now we're seeing coronavirus shifting and you're seeing different dynamics with the disease, but you're seeing colds and

other viruses. I've got one of my team members is out for the last few days, got an initial virus turned into infection, sinus and other infections. My little granddaughter, Lily, the same thing, because people are getting together. And so as the clustering happens, people are taking advantage and so are pathogens. So stand by and beware and think about that. That's part of the big play at the LPRC and has been for two decades now. That's part of the big play at the LPRC and has been for two decades now. And that's for all of us to really think about why and how things happen as well as study them. So with no further ado, I want to thank Tom and Tony and Diego for all today.

And I want to ask you all, please stay safe, stay in touch. We're at lpresearch.org or operations 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.