LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 66 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

LPRC IMPACT 2021 is In-Person from October 4th to the 6th! Product Protection Summit is Ready to Go! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including Vermont is Leading the Vaccine Drive, UN Reports 1.3 million die from road accidents, Connected Cars are Coming, and Return Rates are Increasing. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 66 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we 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. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-s 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 LPRC's Crime Science, the podcast today, the latest in our weekly update series. And I did want to make a special note that one of our research scientists, Mackenzie, is helping me curate a powerful list of upcoming interviews. We're in the process of setting new crime science podcasts that are the monthly and bimonthly episode style, in addition to these weekly updates. And so look for a good lineup of security, APLP practitioners, law enforcement practitioners, criminologists that are going to help us illuminate different areas of environmental

crime prevention, situational crime prevention, and talk about their research and their logic models, the implications for better safeguarding vulnerable people and places. So we're really excited about it. We're also going to be talking to the new director at the University of Florida Center for Retailing. CC will be on. So I'm excited about it. We'll have some AI guests, artificial intelligence, talking about the applications. And then some other solution partners talking about that, as well as we'll be talking a lot about integration. Integration at each aiming point to try and deter, disrupt, or document an offender. And then integration across those aiming points.

So I'm very, very excited about it. So getting to today's update, we keep hearing about the inevitable with any virus, and we'll start there with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease that comes from that infection, if you're infected. The Lambda variant, the one we're hearing about, it does look to be more transmissible. People that are infected look to be a little more contagious, and it's already a very transmissible virus in its earliest forms in these other like Delta variants and so on. So stay tuned on that. There is also some emerging evidence, evidently, that this variant might be better at countering our body's defenses,

the neutralizing antibodies, a little more effectively than the other variants. But so far, all the observed variants that I could find in the literature, while they seem to be increasingly transmissible, more readily spread amongst us, particularly the unvaccinated, they don't seem to be more dangerous. Except that there's some new data around the Delta variant, which we all know is more contagious. But it also looks like it grows more rapidly inside the infected person. If we're infected with that variant, it appears to grow much faster and spread within our own bodies, as well as be teed up and more easily spread to others. And I know we're all concerned about particularly the most vulnerable infants that don't have immunity for X amount of weeks

or months. The elderly, those have become, their immune system has become compromised because of a pathology or through a treatment of a pathology. And of course, the elderly whose immune systems are not as effective anymore, even if they're vaccinated. So that's the reason you continue to see people in very, very tight places and with these new, more transmissible variants go out. And again, I know we've said this almost every week for a year, that the idea is that the vaccines were initially developed to help prevent serious disease and, of course, fatalities from this SARS-CoV-2 virus. And they are still highly, highly effective. We see in Israel where they are very highly vaccinated that they're 64, 65 percent.

They're reporting effective. The Pfizer in particular against infection, even from even the new Delta or Delta plus variants, but still 95, 98% effective against severe disease, COVID-19 disease from that virus. So, you know, that seems to be the key. More states as the studies are coming out, and we know that nationally, well over 99% of COVID-19 deaths in the United States are among the unvaccinated and that the unvaccinated is breaking down what was starting to look like some pretty good herd immunity, group immunity, community immunity, however you want to say it. So stay tuned for more on that. On the vaccine front, we know that there are still close to 80

and do different types of vaccines and preclinical assessment analysis and development, close to 100 in clinical trials, at least 53 different vaccine candidates in phase one, where they're looking at just safety and a little bit of the effectiveness, obviously. Phase two trials, 37 additional vaccine candidates. And then in phase three trials, the large scale trials, 32 candidates, Ten vaccines have emergency use authorization, with several of those now have filed or preparing to file for formal approval. Eight vaccines around the world have formal approval, none in the United States yet. And again, we've looked at different vectors for the vaccines, whether it be through a syringe, whether it be inhalable or a mist, tablets and things and so forth. So many of these vaccine candidates that you see in these trials include

that. And then again, some of the current emergency use authorization vaccines, including Pfizer and Moderna and others have filed for and are testing and getting ready to get approval for other booster doses, should that be indicated for certain patients or maybe even everybody. But bear in mind that what I'm seeing is these are for the most vulnerable whose immune systems are very difficult to activate. And again, the vaccine process is designed to train our bodies, you know, to get us ready for something, just like we'd like our child or us to be prepared to drive a vehicle before we go out and drive. This is preparing our bodies. It's helping our immune system memorize and be alert to and actually have the antibodies and even some

cases T cells already ready to go should we be infected with one of the variants. And so that's all this is. And at this point now, we've got just about 4 billion humans with at least one dose, 1 billion that are fully vaccinated around the world. You know, it's just, it's difficult to track this. It looks like the accuracy, 190 Americans have had at least one dose of vaccine. But closing in, if not surpassing at this point, 160 million Americans have been fully dosed according to vaccine protocols. But again, we're talking about 320 million people. But again, we're talking about 320 million people. So that continues, but particularly about the product protection summit that one of our research scientists, Dr. Corey Lowe, is facilitating this year. These are very reminiscent, but I think

Corey has taken these to the next level. Back then when we had our SIP, solution innovation programs, and we had had several of those hosted by the Kroger company, by Sears Kmart back in the day, by public supermarkets. And they were rigorous assessment of different protective fixtures or what we call zone two and zone one protective options. So these would be a point protection, like something that goes in or on around the product or something that goes on the fixture or part of the fixture peg solution and then the zone two being you know something that primes the zone one in other words helps make it more effective an adjuvant like you see in the vaccines that help further boost the immune response the same thing here we're boosting immune response to theft. And so the way that Corey's running this one is we're looking at first 11 a.m. Eastern on this coming Friday, July 16th, starting off with apparel, protective devices, options that have been evaluated by a certain panel of practitioners. They go into baby formula

after that. They next go into portable power tools. They go in and look at electronic floor care, which to me sounds like, no, these are high-end vacuums and so on, and then into cosmetics. So, stand by for this. This is exciting. It's a relaunch of the availability of more rigorously tested devices and tactics. And what we're trying to do with this overall is not only help curate the process and solution options for the retailers, but help them think more deeply and broadly about product protection, the dynamics that occur before the individual launches their attack, before the end of the building, as they move through the building, as they approach the area where the product is, and then what's around the product, of course, the product itself. That's the

five zones and opportunities to influence people and their behavior, affect them in a positive way. And so this is something that we're excited about. You'll probably see more of these coming up more frequently, either biannually or maybe even quarterly. We'll rotate around. The other part, the other benefit, we believe, of this type of process, just like the SIPs that we did, was to help the solution partners themselves think more deeply and broadly, really better understand concepts and process, but also understand the practicalities in a better way than maybe some of them did in the past about how are these things deployed, why are they not properly deployed? How do we improve and enhance not just the development, the efficaciousness, but partly the execution of the technology? And to us, there is no thing.

It's always a process. but also how to improve how a retailer executes that technology and how we boost and enhance the likelihood that a defender is going to be deterred or disrupted by it and either not come back or even better, desist or discontinue that attempt. So there's a method of the madness here. We're excited about it. And stay tuned for more on that. Impact. Impact is coming up again the 4th, 5th, and 6th of October. As of now, and it looks like going forward, it will be full-on physical, full occupancy impact, LPRC impact, the way that we all know and remember and hopefully love. And so we've got a pretty strong, powerful lineup here coming up. A lot of learning labs and opportunities here to get involved with impact. You're going to again, see

some of the things that we'll talk about, active shooter sessions. We've got powerful training there from the FBI, former FBI. We've got this together through research where we're going to be looking at some of the things I just talked about, how to more better coordinate to integrate for effect and better understand how these theft dynamics occur throughout the five zones. How does this really happen instead of just kind of treating symptoms and superficially doing things that seem to make sense, but without considering all the realities on the ground? We're going to have a nice session with Joe Cole of Macy's, the VP, and Corey, one of our scientists, as I mentioned, around intelligence-led and problem-oriented loss prevention, asset protection.

How do we get more intel, more information to solve specific problems? And a lot of this stems from intelligence-led policing, problem-oriented policing. And so working with our researcher and practitioner brethren in that discipline, how do we get more data around things? And even in real time, how do we combine sensors and things for a more coordinated and effective action? But again, it sounds fancy, but it's something that's going to come down, we believe, pretty strongly and can show with the research to much better outcomes. And that's what we want, both safety and financial. The role of retail and community crime prevention, again, reaching out and engaging across the five zones, right? You can see a real theme here of integration and coordination, selecting and getting to know and working

better with partners internally in the business, working externally with our mall or our center operators with law enforcement to better understand, coordinate, and affect good behavior, and even getting out there into those blocks or apartment buildings or whatever, where maybe there are clusters of people that are picking on their neighbors and family, but are picking on the retailer with theft, fraud, violence. So stay tuned for that. Curbside pickup, we've got some, it's still a hot topic. Many retailers are telling us, you know what, we're still not good at it. It looks like it's going to be here a while. It's persistent, chronic. Our customers love it. And I'm not sure we can just make it go away. We need to make it better. There's a value exchange discussion. Again,

how do we, all of us all day, every day exchange our privacy or so-called privacy for some value, convenience, entertainment, safety? What does that look like? And then show some real world examples of that. Back to the active assailant killer shooter front, we're going to have a sort of a higher level, global level, look at these events, what precipitates them, what precipitation signals could we pick up on, how can we better respond and act in the moment, and then recover. In this case, now we go to retailers that have actually experienced these things and talk about that. Synergy and Science talking a lot about how to maximize safety and security by coordinating.

Again, integrating with different retailers within your own organization with our other partners. I'm excited about it. We've got executives from Alta and Kroger Company in there. Other ones we've got with Walmart, Publix, Rite Aid, At Home, Rick Beardsley. We've got a nice active shooter risk mapping, Lessons Learned, where we're going to do a deep dive with CapIndex and our team, Kenna Carlson, our research team leader, and doing a great look at where these events are happening, looking at time and place, not just place. And again, so you can see how we're peeling the onion. We're looking at things from different angles and different ways to consolidate and come

up with user-friendly, if you will, actionable checklists and things like that, ways to better prepare for prevention, for handling, and for recovery recovery and so on. Really cool session on defining organized retail crime in a much deeper. We've got six ORC, high-level ORC investigators with a ton of experience and expertise working with our research team to go ahead and do deep dives and look at some of the newest things that they're finding and opportunity points, including all the way extending it to working with legislatures. There is a possibility, and that's all it is right now, that the University of Florida Government Affairs might help us tee up a panel of a U.S. Senator, U.S. congressperson, and then a Florida senator and a Florida legislator,

House speaker or representative, so that there can be a real deep dive discussion around ORC community engagement, the erosion of consequence for offenders that emboldens them because of inadequate statutes and laws, inadequate prosecution, and even some ways to better enhance the training and execution of policing. We've got out-of-stock research working with Procter & Gamble, who everybody that handles their products know the opportunities there. And then going through and doing a deeper dive with artificial intelligence in a real world and use case and so on. So that's just some of the highlights. So you're going to see a ton of science, but a lot of practical application with a lot of the right

people doing the right things and trying to do it the right way together and scientifically, which again is a logic model and evidence that work together to get a better outcome. In addition to some fantastic social events, the lab tours, we now have the five physical labs, the virtual reality lab demonstrations, and on and on. So I've kind of taken up more than my share of time. So let me do this. Remember to reach out to lpresearch.org, lpresearch.org, and let us know what you think. So with no further ado, let me go over to my friend and colleague, Tony D'Onofrio. And Tony, if you can light us up with what's going on around the world. Thank you very much, Reid. Again, great update and looks like an action-packed agenda at Impact. And I'm really, really looking forward to being live there with you because it sounds like an exciting, very, very exciting agenda.

Just first, a quick update on LPRC Europe. UK is still not open, and all indications are that it will not be open to foreign travelers coming in by next week at this point. So we are actually working with the European team and also our lead retailer that is helping us there, TJX, in terms of postponing it. And we will come back to you with more details for the folks that have been following where we're at with LPRC Europe. Let me switch now to some really interesting data that was relevant this week. One supporting what Reid talked about in terms of the state of vaccines. There was a new summary that came out from Statista on what we're at with vaccines in the U.S. and this supplements a lot of the things that Reid has said. As of July 4th, 172 million people in the U.S. or 67 percent of the population have received one dose and 150 million or 46 percent are fully vaccinated. The state that leads in the U.S. in terms of vaccination is Vermont. 66 percent of the population is fully vaccinated in Vermont. Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut also have vaccination rates of 60% and higher. So there the states are leading. The lowest

vaccination rates in the U.S. are in Mississippi at 30% fully vaccinated and close in lagging are Alabama at 33%, Arkansas and Louisiana at roughly 35%. So you can see the other states that I mentioned are double that rate. So we have still some work to do in some states in the U.S. to get the vaccinations going. Also, I found interesting this week from Visual Capitalist, the latest survey in terms of are we happy? This actually asked around the world, all continents, where each continent stood in the happiness meter. So I can say that according to Visual Capitalist, for 2021, North America is currently happy. The average in North America is 11% higher than the global average. The number one country that is the happiest in the U.S. is Canada, but its overall

ranking has dropped. In 2019, it was ranked ninth, and now it's dropped to number 11 in the latest edition. It would drop 11th in 2020 and it's 14th in the 2021. But for North America, it is the happiest country. U.S. is close to their score and it's also the most improved. The unhappiest country in North America is Haiti. In South America, the mood right now is just content. They're not happy. They're just content. And they are 77.3% higher than the global average.

The happiest country is Uruguay, with Brazil also being close to being content. The unhappiest country is Venezuela. In Europe, the current mood is, again, happy, 16% higher than the global average. The number one country in the world that is the happiest happens to be in Europe, and it's Finland. And they've been ranked in that number one stage for quite a while. The unhappiest country in Europe is Ukraine. In the Middle East, the mood is complicated. The happiest

country is Israel. The unhappiest country is Afghanistan. In Asia Pacific, the mood is neutral. New Zealand is the happiest country. The least happy country is India. And finally, in Africa, the mood is unhappy. The happiest country is Mauritius, and the unhappiest country is Zimbabwe. So interesting how the mood is, where the mood stands as we've gone through COVID-19 around the world. Also interesting to me this week, and this one is from the World Economic Forum, what's happening to connected cars and how fast the connected car market is growing? So the market for connected cars is predicted to be worth $215 billion by 2027. With the demand for connectivity, it's expected to soar especially

as 5G comes to market. And the benefits that are seen from connected cars are potentially the cars will be safer and less harmful to the environment. Safety is an important factor. According to the United Nations, approximately 1.3 million people die every year as a result of road traffic accidents, with 20 to 50 million people suffering non-fetal injuries. Over half of all deaths are vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists. Connected cars also improve consumer experiences. McKinsey, for example, in their research found that 40% of consumers would actually change a car brand just to gain more connectivity with their vehicles.

And for countries like China, it's even higher. It's 61% that they will switch cars because the car is more connected. So connected cars are coming. Switching to the world of retail. CNBC has some interesting data on what's happening with fitting rooms being closed in a lot of stores through COVID and also return rates and how much of the merchandise we of consumers in the U.S. returned unwanted products from March 20 to March 2021, and most of that was clothing. Consumers returned roughly $428 billion in merchandise last year, which was an amazing 10.6% of total retail sales in the U.S. Clothing made up 12.2% of that, adding that for every $1 billion in sales, the average retailer incurs an amazing $106 million

in merchandise returns. A big challenge for retailers and why a lot of those clothes are returned is getting to size and getting to things that fit. And a lot of that is because a lot of the fitting rooms are closed. And how are retailers responding? Well, they're investing in technology. One of them that actually was involved with a company in Silicon Valley is actually a technology that allows you to take a 3D image of your body

that then can be inputted into the website so that you actually get the actual product that actually fits you. Companies are actually getting very strategic about this. Walmart actually acquired a company from Israel called Z-Kit, and it's really designed to cater to apparel for their e-commerce. With Z-Kit technologies embedded in Walmart's website, customers will be able to upload photos of themselves or choose from different models that represent their height, shape, and skin tone.

The site will then show you how the clothes will fit on you. ZKIT said that their virtual fitting rooms can cut return rates by 35%. And return rates are indeed a huge problem in retail. I've been talking about that forever, especially in apparel and especially with online sales. And I've seen percentages as high as 50% of clothes bought online that actually get returned. So that is a problem that needs to be fixed.

And finally, some good news from chain storage this week. The retail industry is set for the biggest back-to-school spending season in recent years as parents and students look forward to returning to the classroom after a year of virtual running. Spending is expected to reach $32.5 billion in the U.S. for grades K-12 or approximately $612 per student. That represents a 16% increase over 2020 and is also greater than the pre-pandemic level. Another $26.7 planning to spend more on back-to-school items, up 22% for 2020. And that will include clothes, supplies, computers, and electronics. or surprising spending on technology products such as personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and wearables is set to increase an amazing 37% over 2020 to nearly $12 billion as parents adjust to the realities of a more digitally connected education system. Also, there's going to be much more spending this year on wearables as another technology linked to education.

So good news in terms of how retail. And again, I'll restate what NRF said. NRF projects that this year retail sales will be bigger, the biggest since 1984. So retail will have a really, really good year. And with that, let me turn over to Reed. Wow. Thank you, Tony. As ever, incredible information, actionable information to help us all better kind of

view the world and then view what we're dealing with in that context. So always helpful. And I, again, want to reach out to our listeners, encourage you to reach out to us at operations at lpresearch.org. Go to our lpresearch.org website. Weigh in. Let us know what you think. Tune in. Our weekly e-newsletter, The Connect, is free for everybody. It's short, tight, very visual, and I think it's got really good information links in it. So you can also request getting on that email list for that weekly impact statement there

from the LPRC in the form of the Connect. So I want to thank my friends and colleagues. We'll thank also Diego Rodriguez, our producer, but of course, Tony D'Onofrio for all their good content. Stay tuned, as I mentioned earlier, for a lot more new podcasts coming out with some interesting but impactful, I think, people that will help us all learn, think, and do better with what we're trying to get done out here. But stay safe, stay in touch. Signing off from Gainesville. Thank you.

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 Loss Prevention Research Council.