LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 75 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: September 18, 2021

Pandemic Prisoners are Released Early! LPRC IMPACT is Oct 5th to 6th Virtually! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including Physiological Changes in the Brain from COVID, Travel Screening has Increased Internationally, and Company Vaccine Policies Vary. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 75 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. Thank you everybody for joining Crime Science the podcast. This is the latest in our weekly update series. I'm joined by our co-hosts Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, as well as our producer Diego Rodriguez. And we'll talk a little bit about starting off with the Delta variant, the COVID-19 disease leader, tragically across the globe. I've saw several more first responders pass away from the disease, and including a couple leaving five children. So it's harmless for 90 plus percent of humans, it looks like, but very dangerous for a certain percentage. And it's just difficult sometimes to define. So therefore, it's still paralyzing the globe to a certain extent, even though most people are starting to move around and accept that this is becoming endemic, but I'll try trying to follow all the different research guidance on the best ways to reduce and suppress the spread of the vaccine.

And I know my little granddaughter, she is just started both ballet and two a day twos. So she's around some other little ones and their parents, even though the parents aren't there inside. But it's an interesting time for everybody around the world. And I was looking at the data today from the University of Florida, UF Health. They come out every week with summaries. There were 160 plus people hospitalized with COVID-19 disease. Then they're down to about 136, something like that. So it seems stable around between 120 and 160 over the last several weeks now. And I looked at the quarantine numbers for University of Florida students are currently 364 that tested positive for COVID-19 and are quarantined. I get tested every

week, as do a lot of us. About 3% of the, say, 3,000 to 5,000 tests that are done here weekly are testing positive. Unfortunately, I have not in 18 months, but giving you an idea. So it's out there and with 130, so almost 140 hospitalized, it's clearly having an impact. But again, so many that are not hospitalized are losing their sense of taste or smell or they're changing. And again, that's signifying some kind of brain effects is what the data seemed to show. So even in those mild cases, something's going on now, whether it's just temporary or not, is still to be determined since we're about 18 months plus into this known epidemic that segued into a pandemic. We see that there's these kind of bizarre things going on. We see the administration, the Biden administration, moving to grant clemency to some inmates or many inmates that were released during the pandemic.

So I know that others are racing to make sure that somehow there's some good judgment here in who in the world is having their sentences commuted since they're on the street? We hear the individual horror stories of people that were released, the victims of those people. It's by and large, not all of them. In fact, it's rare. But yet, if you're that victim or data to understand better instead of just a blanket policy that may or may not be politically driven. We just don't know. And by the same token, we're seeing this, you know, 18 leading scientists, the FDA. Now, I'm not sure if I'm reading different articles, roughly a dozen scientists at the FDA, advisors.

articles, roughly a dozen scientists at the FDA, advisors, we know that at least two very senior research scientists in the vaccine area have actually taken retirement in protest. So the idea that the boosters are needed, it's still, according to these scientists, up in the air, or needed at this point yet, this juncture. And we know that Israel is serving as a guide in a lot of ways because they're smaller. They've got some pretty quick and fairly good coverage of their vaccines and the vaccination levels there. But they determined, particularly those that were immunocompromised and others, that they needed to go back in and provide some booster levels for them. And so as everybody understands what happens from, we talked about before, the antibody levels, as well as the different B and T cells, that cellular activity, what's needed, how long does it seem to be sustained?

activity, what's needed, how long does it seem to be sustained. But we see again with, we all vary in our immune responses to anything, including the vaccines, which are training our immune systems to recognize this particular coronavirus upon entry. So we get quicker and more effective responses before there's damage done is what's going on. Now, there was a really interesting article I'd recommend everybody looking at from Fast Company, looking at CDC data and the graphs that were generated at the differences in the vaccinated, unvaccinated, particularly the death level, the fatality rate is just incredibly disparate and rising in the non-vax. So we'll have to see how this all goes.

We're still hearing, though, that there's a lot of good vaccination going on now, more and more people. Again, some of those that were concerned about what somebody might think one way or the other, that those people are now starting to get vaccinated in much greater numbers. So you're going to see those people are probably providing more safety for themselves because their immune systems, again, will be ready to go. So what we'll do is I'm going to go over to impact here real quickly and talk for a minute about the content that we've got available. about the content that we've got available. And Kenna, our research team leader has provided

a lot of good data around what we're gonna be working on here. And so I thought what I'd do is kind of go through the impact upcoming agenda here. So first off we've got on that Tuesday, 1 p.m. roughly the kickoff of Impact 2021 virtual. And you're going to see us introduce a little bit about the LPRC and the University of Florida and that relationship and what all we're working on with and for retailers and our solution partners. And excited to start that off. We're going to quickly segue into managing the age of active shooter.

Moving forward, what we do is we've got a 23-year FBI veteran, Jin Kim, who is an absolute, absolute expert on active killer scenarios, preparation, handling, and recovery. Talking through that with him. There's going to be a nice networking session with questions queued up. We're going to go in together through research, where our team is going to go through all the different research that we're working on, how we research. We're going to take some dives and looks into the Safer Places Lab here at the University of Florida. We're then next going to go into our virtual expo and poster session, where we're going to

have a lot of research that we conduct on posters, a long academic tradition. If you go to any research conference, including those in criminology, you're going to see a lot of posters. And here at UF, if you go even into our O'Connell Center, the O'Connell Center, where the basketball team plays and volleyball, you'll see massive the entire floor covered with rows and rows and rows of scientific posters that the graduate and undergraduate students produce and or faculty, depending on the conference. So it'll be a lot going on there. We've got another learning lab around the role of retail and community crime prevention. And what we're talking about is engaging and getting out in front of the problems to a certain extent. We know that homelessness, drug abuse, drug trafficking, domestic disputes, but we also come out of the certain areas more frequently that there's a problem

there or the stores that are located near those areas or easily access from those areas. And so looking at some of the scientific research around engaging in the community and working with our external partners, we're going to go into tackling the out-of-stock problems, looking at some research there. It's a pretty neat deep dive there on looking at it. We're going to be working with Procter & Gamble, talk about some research we're doing there in phases, and talk about one of the projects there with Galena Hoppehoofs from P&G and Kenna going through the value exchange there. We're also going to be looking at data privacy and what it means, how we exchange and trade privacy for convenience, for entertainment, and of course, for safety and security of

us and our loved ones. We're going to be looking at the interaction between the environment and the individual in case studies of retail gun violence and looking at the role that that parking lot, the entry exit and the store itself can play in that retail gun crime. and Kenna. We're going to be looking on day two. We're going to kick off again at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, October 6th. You're going to be seeing things around intelligence-led policing and loss prevention, improving outcomes with event-based data. So, you know, here's where we zoom out and we look at data so we can zoom in and zoom out. In this case, it's more of a macro view with Dr. Corey Lowe. We're going to be looking again at the virtual expo and some more research that's been done via posters as a tool to look at them. We're going to be doing a lunch and learn. And it looks like through the University of Florida's government affairs team, they have a team, as you can imagine, in Tallahassee, Florida, the state

capital, and then a team in Washington, D.C. that are there to get to know and interact with the policymakers and the lawmakers and to get to know what's coming up, lobby, and make sure that those legislators and those policymakers are aware of the capabilities of the university from a research standpoint. So a lot of that going on. We're going to be talking about that. What are some of the critical needs from an organized retail crime with some of the leading legislators and policymakers? Can't release the names just yet. We're going to be looking at that community engagement and better partnerships. What do we do about the erosion of consequences? Because we have fewer law enforcement.

We've got certain prosecutors that are reluctant to prosecute. And we've got other dynamics going on that are creating the problem. So this is a really, really unique and exciting opportunity to engage with the right people at the state and at the national level and look for this to kind of continue a little bit because of UF governmental affairs. There have been teams coming through, including some top legislators through the LPRC labs, going through briefings, asking questions. So there is, let's just say there's a lot of energy and excitement on campus from senior leaders as well as in the state and national capitals. So we're pretty excited about that. We'll be talking about a good day for bad guy integration for better effect across affecting the red guy, the bad guy's journey to and from crime and identifying aiming points for our sensors and for our action tools.

So look at some of that going on. We're going to be doing some deep dives into curbside transactions, pickup, exchanges, returns, and better safeguarding and making them more efficient and convenient at the same time. So look for some of that. So that's a little bit of the content going on at LPRC Impact 2021. So we're just thrilled about it. We're three weeks out. Please go to lpresearch.org. Register you and your team. There's no charge. It is going to be an amazing

amount of content going forward here. All right. So with no further ado, if I could turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, if you can bring us up to speed. Thank you very much, Reid, and everyone on the call today. I really appreciate all the great update and really looking forward to LPRC impact. Today, I'm coming actually to you from Spain. So I decided to travel to Europe again. And I can tell you the variant is impacting travel. It was a lot more difficult to get into Europe, at least through Italy, to actually get into the country. A lot more testing and a lot more scrutinizing on the U.S. side to actually exit the country. But I'm here.

Let me switch to some data this week that I found interesting to share with the audience. One of them is what's happening to companies requiring vaccination, and this is from Statista to see how it's evolving. So in June this year, 9% of employees surveyed said their company required them to get vaccinated, surveys said their company required them to get vaccinated. 66% only encouraged it and 29% had no indicated presence. By August, just a few months later, the percentage of companies requiring vaccination increased to 19%. The percentage encouraging, just encouraging it dropped to 55%. And the percentage not indicating either way, dropped 26%. So companies are getting more active in terms of enforcing vaccines.

Also interesting that the Delta variant and the impact it's having on retail. Some new research from Retail Dive indicates that consumers are going back to the old habits of the pandemic, with 20% highly optimistic about a return to normal down from a third at the beginning of the summer. Nearly 60% are very or somewhat concerned about holiday plans being disrupted by the pandemic. about holiday plans being disrupted by the pandemic. The number of people who had resumed pre-COVID behaviors fell for the first time for 39% in July, to 27% in August, nearly half say they expect

a full reopening to be delayed now until 2022 or later, up from 23% who said so in July and 19% in June. So again, 50% don't expect to be in recovery mode till next year. The comfort level of shopping without a mask dropped 15 percentage points from July to August, with 34% preferring to go into stores with mask requirements, and 36% in a higher level of respect for businesses that enforce mask wearing. So the pandemic is impacting retail and it's leading to changes in terms of how companies are reacting. Also very interesting to me in terms of how the pandemic has accelerated what's known as the gig economy, which actually has doubled in size.

There are now 1.1 billion gig workers in the world with 55 million in the U.S. Two million Americans try gig work for the first time. By 2027, almost half of the U.S. population will have engaged in gig work. Delivery, so getting those food and everything else to your home is one of the biggest growing verticals. It's going to reach 200 billion by 2025, growing at over 10% a year. Full-time drivers, they make an average $50,000. The benefits that the gig workers cite is 58% work 30 hours or less per week. 70% see higher pay than traditionally employed peers. More flexible hours with 54% of freelancers choosing this for this reason. And 73% of Americans hiring managers are expecting to hire more gig workers post the

pandemic. So working in the gig economy is going to continue to increase. And let me end this week with some really interesting data in terms of what's happening to supply chain, which have been stressed because of the economy. A brand new study on supply chain and where it's going and some of the key technologies was published by RIS News. The top three obstacles to overcome that impede efficiency and productivity in supply chains are lack of real-time inventory, visibility, labor and skill, shortage required for improving and hiring and human resources, and inability to adjust or respond to fluctuations in demand. are optimizing fulfillment to improve margins, expand local fulfillment and micro-fulfillment, improve responsiveness to demand fluctuation, maximize digital channel support, and expand collaboration with supply chain partners. For 2022, the top five focus areas are to diversify the supplier base, improve the ability to leverage shopper behavior data, digital transformation, expand insourcing to become more self-sufficient, and expand collaboration with supply chain partners.

30% of the overall amount of tech budgets retailers are devoting to improving supply chains. There's a lot of money being spent on. And the top six emerging technologies that are coming in the supply chain are greater partnering with tech-driven delivery services, micro-fulfillment centers, robots for picking and packing, dark stores, robots and computer vision for shelf stock, and drones for self-delivery and customer delivery. So the data, very interesting this week, it basically says that COVID is still here. The Delta variant is impacting a lot of different areas, including and creating new opportunities that we talked about, such as the gig economy. Supply chains continue to be stressed, and there's also a lot of technology going into

supply chains to get those optimized on a go-forward basis. So interesting how the world keeps accelerating and changing. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Tony. And thank you, Reid. It's interesting, Tony, just two weeks ago when I traveled, I didn't see a lot of lag throughout Europe, but I did see some of the testing and things, but it seemed to be pretty seamless. But I think it's a day-by-day fluid situation. So I wanted to start with something related to the Citizens app. And I know that we've talked about the Citizens app.

It feels like, I think this is episode 74, or we're pretty far, and it feels like very early on. And the Citizens app was an app that's available both on Android and iOS, which in certain markets and in several large markets throughout the U.S., aggregates 911 data and human-consumed data to report safety alerts. So one of the premise when the app first came out in New York City was you have the app on your phone and it would notify you in real time if there was a threat or activity that could be disruptive to you. So I know that throughout the fusion that this was one of the tools we use this was a free app, a free app. And just recently they offered a paid subscription option. And

this came under a high degree of scrutiny because at some times the app was used in a crowd sourcing methodology to identify a suspect and And as we all know, when a whole bunch of people that aren't trained start to identify a suspect, it creates a challenge. And in Los Angeles, there was actually a person who was allegedly an arson suspect turned out to be an innocent suspect. And the Citizens app, through the crowdsourcing piece, sent this to 850,000 users in the LA County area. And so that drew a lot of attention. This was about a year ago. The app has come paid, but what really I wanted to talk about today is the importance of when we're using these apps to, as a part of our open source intelligence gathering that we understand where the app information is

coming from. So while their 911 data is unconfirmed and from a 911 call, it's important that if this is a part of your strategy for your SOC, that you understand that the crowdsourcing information is unverified. And usually you would see that it was driven by taking a photo or video from a person. The paid portion of the app, interestingly enough, is, I don't know how else to equate about like OnStar for yourself. So if you were in your car and you got an accident, you could hit a button and get an agent. So the citizens paid version actually allows you to talk to a real-time

agent who could have predetermined information to contact people. This is kind of like a personalized 911 service. So I thought it was relevant just because I know in the past several of the folks that ran SOX use this application. I still use it. I don't think that I'll be using the paid application. I think it's a good tool to have in your open source intelligence and toolbox if you're looking for your active monitoring scenario. This is a great tool for active shooters,

fires, and civil disturbance. Just keep in mind that it is crowdsourced. So there is information that is unvalidated. And I think Tony may have mentioned this, but I'm seeing a lot of news coming up of Amazon announcing, and it was kind of announced under the radar, but really picked up by most of the news sources that they're opening two whole food stores with no cash years next year, one in the DC market, I think one in Sherman Oaks, California.

And this is a fully cashierless store. There isn't a lot of data of what that means. We don't know if they're kiosks or if it's a larger form for the Amazon Go, but we'll continue to monitor this. It's got a lot of tension via the news wires and social media zooms, but I think it's too early to determine what it is. I'm certainly very interested to see how they take the approach if they take a self-checkout approach or a full sensor-based approach. I've seen articles that

have said both and Amazon has not commented except for the fact that they're opening these two stores. said both and Amazon has not commented except for the fact that they're opening these two stores. Switching gears a little bit to something that I don't think we normally talk about, but was a legal case between Apple and Epic Games. I thought it was somewhat relevant for folks that use smartphones today, but there was a legal battle and a lot of news. I mean, this was something where to give context to it is Epic Games sued Apple because of the fact that Apple forced payment to go through their app store and get a 30% connection. And just to give some context why I thought this was really interesting is they generate about $12 billion in profit from the App Store. So the thing of Home Depot, that's actually a little bit more profit than all of Home Depot, just the Apple App Store.

So this victory for Epic Games, but really for everybody in the App Store, allows folks like Spotify, like Epic Games, to actually collect payment directly and not pay the fee. collect payment directly and not pay the fee. There is kind of another turn of this lawsuit because it was truly an antitrust lawsuit. And while the judge addressed that, one of the things he said, the comment is success is not illegal. Apple has 55% of the market share in the app world and said that that doesn't mean that it's antitrust. It just means they were really successful. So while this is a victory in some, it's also a victory for Apple to say that what they were doing is right. Why I thought it was relevant, because I know we all talk about apps and I suspect you will

see some of the apps you're paying for today, like Spotify, any of these non-Apple related apps, that you'll see a potential price decrease for all the listeners if you're going to pie direct to them. So just an interesting tidbit of news around technology and something to think about. Another thing that's hitting pretty heavily, and I think we definitely talked about this when this first broke, but I thought it was relevant, is update your iOS. If you have an Apple iPhone, update it. There was an update that went out this week related to a zero-day attack that we did address several weeks ago, really, when it first came out, where the vulnerability takes advantage of the iMessage platform.

This is a simple one. Just we say it all the time here on the podcast is update the app, you know, update your devices, constantly make sure that they're patched. That's the quickest, easiest way to protect yourself in this crazy world of security threats that we have. And then lastly, which is just a simple reminder, we've seen just a tremendous amount of an uptick in vishing and phishing and actually text message scams that have come through. One of the things that occurred is with the last two breaches, just a tremendous amount of phone numbers released. So there was an influx of literally millions of text message scams, some related to the pandemic, some related to

COVID vaccines. And if I didn't share this already, some of them are just remarkably timed correctly. So for me, when I got back from Europe, the next day, I got what looked like a very authentic text message saying that I was potentially exposed to COVID and to go here. I noticed right away that the URL was not an active URL that was kind of routed through a foreign country. So I did a little digging. But the crazy part here is I was traveling. So interestingly enough, when I dug into it, they sent out about 300,000 messages to random phone numbers. I happened to just be traveling. If I didn't take that extra 10 or 15 seconds, probably would have clicked on it because it was pretty on spot to say the next day, make sure that you click here, you were exposed.

You were just known to be traveling in an area where COVID was. And just the reminder is to double check and be really vigilant on this, because this is how some of those exploits happen. And when I tell you that there are millions a second happening, it's probably an understatement. That's what we know about. And Tony's traveling right now. Reid travels. Just imagine if you send 100 million

text messages out, you know, and only 1% of those people are actually traveling, how easy it is to click on a link and divulge personal information or potentially actually open yourself up to a vulnerability. And with that, I will turn it back over to Reid. All right. Well, thank you, Tony. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Diego. And for all of you all listening and tuning in, we're always looking forward to your questions, your comments, your suggestions at lpresearch.org or operations at lpresearch.org. Get involved, get engaged, help us move loss prevention, asset protection forward from a science perspective. Stay safe. 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 Loss Prevention Research Council.