LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 83 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

A New Variant Reaches the US! LPRC Kickoff is January 19th in NYC Bloomingdales Flagship Store! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including the newest cyber trends,... Holiday Shopping Trends analyzed abroad, GDP Projections for the US and Europe are Explained, and Bitcoin still in the news. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 83 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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
Starting point is 00:00:35 improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. We're going to go through the weekly edition series and joined by my colleagues, Tom Meehan and Tony D'Onofrio and our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to go through a little bit of update on first starting with the COVID-19, still global pandemic. Somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 Americans have died as a result of the disease or in great part because of COVID-19. So serious issue,
Starting point is 00:01:24 very serious issue. So we're talking a little bit about reading and a little more about what's going on. And we've talked a little bit about mechanisms and how similar they are to what we deal with, with crime and harm. And so in this case, you know, we know there's an individual individual we are infected with a given virus in this case let's say COVID-19 from the SARS-CoV-2 virus so we get the disease we have at different levels we've heard about that there's a gum now that they are it's in testing that is designed to trap a lot of particles because we talked about the more particles that our body generates through replication, the more likely we are to infect another. And that's how viruses go viral and move from human to human to human to human. And so the gum is designed to trap those particles,
Starting point is 00:02:17 dramatically reduce the amount that we would expel during normal speech or singing or yelling or laughing or coughing or sneezing. And so an interesting way to look at, again, the pathways as we do with crime, the pathway to crime. How do we work through five zones, three-dimensionally, starting out there from the very beginning and have a layered defense, if you will, but a very, very purposeful and precise and tested, you know, integrated strategy. So the same thing goes with healthcare. You know, now we're talking about we're start to the particles are in the air.
Starting point is 00:02:55 That's why we talked over and over and over again about how masking can reduce the particle load that we expel that the distance decay theory, again, the farther an offender has to travel to a given store or place that they're trying to victimize or harm, the more likely they're to go ahead and desist, peel off, do a U-turn, do something else. The same thing with the virus, the fewer particles available, the less likely if somebody on the receiving end is to get infected or at least have a serious infection through that distance. And then, of course, we know the air currents help dissipate the viral particles and so forth. And then again, if we're masked up on the other end, the better mask we've got, the fewer particles that we're likely to onboard. So you can just see
Starting point is 00:03:41 these layers, these nets, these ways that we're reducing the particle load that's available, that we're exposed to, just like, again, a crime level that we're exposed to, and then how well we handle that. And that's where it comes into good health, you know, good night's sleep. We're not overly obese, evidently plays some role mechanistically. I'm still not clear on how that works through the readings that I've done. But there are different health practices we have. And then we either have some natural immunity from a prior infection or we have through a vaccine our immune system, both the antibody and the different cellular activity is now been alerted and is looking for and ready. Should we onboard particles and they make it to that point and so on.
Starting point is 00:04:31 So we just can see this, the pathways and what's going on at each step and stage of an infection. And so that's where we come into some interesting things. If you look, I saw a new study showing that those of us that can have allergies from pathogens in the environment, allergens from cats or from trees or grasses and things like that tend to be, it looks like a 23% lower risk of contracting disease if they're exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They're trying to understand what those mechanisms look like. Is that body already ready? Is the immune system in a different state of alert or something like that? But pretty interesting in trying to understand that. A University of Florida study showed, though, that those that have had severe COVID up to 12 months after recovering from COVID-19 severe disease, in this case,
Starting point is 00:05:28 are likely to die, that they're at much higher risk of death. And so more to come on that. And what happens is, again, with any observational studies that we might do in criminology or that we do or that others do in healthcare, the observation means we're looking at data, things that have already happened, and trying to understand everything that happened at the same time, and doing these statistical models, and seeing what relates to what, and potentially how, but it's until we do experimental research
Starting point is 00:05:57 that we can start to say, well, I think this is happening. Let me see. I'm going to introduce what happens, and when it happens and where it happens. So the difference between experimental research and observational research, they're both critical. They both inform each other, but that gives you some insight into how scientists look at the world. So we don't know in the case of if you've had severe COVID, why you're more at risk of death than a person
Starting point is 00:06:25 that has not had severe disease. So even up to a year after you've recovered from it. Another thing is this Omicron transmissibility that's interesting. As the scientists break it down, trying to understand, it appears to be more transmissible. And we talked about that, the pathway to do that. transmissible. And we talked about that, the pathway to do that. But they've identified so far, looking at the 50 plus mutations, about 30 roughly mutations on the spike protein itself, that mutation has a little bit faster binding to a cell for those that are infected.
Starting point is 00:07:06 Number two, it seems to be more immuno evasive. In other words, it seems to maybe be ready for the antibodies that somebody has generated in response to the infection. But they're more immuno evasive, they've got ways to tamp that down, to not be countered in some way can't transmit or replicate, and so on. In this case, they overcome what our immune system is trying to do to get rid of the virus. The other thing that was interesting is that the scientists believe that in our bodies, normally, once we've been infected, we're really not highly infectious or capable of transmitting the disease to others. But it normally takes around seven days. In this case, it looks like the Omicron, it only takes four days.
Starting point is 00:07:49 The replication cycles or process is much faster. So it's interesting to understand, and this is what we do, try and do again with Crohn, is understand all these very underlying mechanisms that are occurring, why and how they are. Those give us places to aim to get better, to reduce the problem. Looking again at the vaccines, we continue to see those that are emergency use authorization
Starting point is 00:08:15 are now up to 16. I can remember when they were zero until we got the Pfizer BioNTech was emergency use authorization in the US and then later fully approved. But there are now 52 in human clinical trials in phase one. Phase two, 46 candidates, 43 more in phase three, large scale human clinical trials. Again, 16 are now emergency use authorization around the world. And with nine now, we're up to nine that have full approval through, again, reviewing all the phase one, the two, the three randomized controlled double-blind placebo trials. And then again, in the case of Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and so on, they've undergone
Starting point is 00:09:00 those same trials and evaluation, not just in the United States, but in other countries around the world. So heavily, heavily researched. These these are not experimental these have been experimented and found to be safe and efficacious again though they're all designed it looks like to just activate our immune system so we don't get as sick from the virus rather than keep us from getting the virus or even unfortunately spreading the virus. Okay, so moving to the therapies, there continually be the pills, the new research on pills, on nasal sprays. I saw another one that UF did here at the University of Florida showing where they ran thousands of compounds and they found a particular over-the-counter antihistamine when combined with a milk protein that is benign, that that
Starting point is 00:09:53 combination seems to provide a lot of viral spread or replication action in our bodies. So that looks interesting. So again, there are literally hundreds of therapies and clinical trials as we get forward. Now, moving on to just a little bit about the LPRC. We're trying to be responsive. And as many of you know, we've gone over to London. In fact, Tony D'Onofrio will be sending his recording in. He's as we speak and recording this Tuesday morning here over in London again on another trip but when the team was over there meeting with British retailers they wanted us to follow up with a call where we outlined some case studies so we'll be having our LPRC Europe
Starting point is 00:10:36 case study call tomorrow actually Wednesday at 10 a.m. and we're going to go over several case studies, in other words, LPRC research, what the problem was, what we researched, what the results or findings were, and the implications of using those, including one that had a nice ROI metric in there. So we'll show the our British and European colleagues some of the research that the LPRC has been doing. We have a cluster call due to all the mass riots or robs, excuse me, the mass robs that are going on right now where the mobs come in and are stealing with groups across the United States now. So our cluster call will be, excuse me, on Thursday, this coming Thursday at 6 p.m. Eastern time for all retailers. We've got quite a few retailers have already signed up for that. And we look for dozens more chains as
Starting point is 00:11:33 well. We had a nice visit yesterday from another senior leader and team from a major retailer, in this case, one of the pharmacy or drug chains. But we've had multiple leaders and their teams come in throughout 2021. And we invite you all to either virtually or in person, come into Gainesville, brainstorm with us, tour our labs. But let's get, let's work together to solve the most pressing issues you might have and do that methodically. So we've got, again, our events as a reminder, we'll be up in New York City. It all holds well with the pandemic for the National Retail Federation's annual big show, the NRF big show. And we'll be there from Sunday through probably Thursday of that week.
Starting point is 00:12:22 We'll have LPRC kickoff hosted by, again, Bloomingdale's on January 19th from 8.30 in the morning till 12.30 at their flagship store there. So if you have interest in, you're an LPRC member, you're going to be in the city, please reach out again to operations at lpresearch.org. The same thing for the cluster call, the LPRC Europe call, and so on. LPRC Ignite, which is our annual planning for our board of advisors and our LPRC Innovate advisory panel, will be in Gainesville on February 16th. So we've got a pretty exciting lineup as far as content and planning for that. so just to name a few of the things that are happening here at the lprc so what i'd like to do is turn it over now to tom mehan
Starting point is 00:13:12 and hear from tom tom if you could update us i appreciate it well thank you reid great updates as always a couple different things mostly on the cyber security front but i'll start with organized retail crime update i know we've all heard about it, but there has been, and I think this is very positive, and I know, Reid, we talked about this a little bit in the last podcast, but I think we'll continue to do it. There has been a pretty big adoption of most, if not all of the certainly national, but international news picking this up, CNN, Fox, you name it, New York Times, The Washington Post. I know we all talk a lot about the, I think the article that started it, which was the Wall Street Journal article that featured Ben Dugan. But
Starting point is 00:13:56 I did a little quick look and it looks like there's roughly 4,500 new news stories in the past six months, which is a big win if we really think about where we were before. And the other thing that is, you know, different, if you will, and without, you know, this is definitely an objective statement, that these stories are predominantly addressing the issue or the concern and the impact that has on consumers and retailers. And I know for a short period of time, with all of the things going on throughout the United States and really globally with the pandemic and some of the political climates, some of the past news stories were either neutral or waiting on, you know, how the problems were not necessarily things that were new or that retailers could control. And, you know, specifically in some of the markets, it was your retailers
Starting point is 00:14:54 needed to do more with the community. Now we're seeing kind of this stark difference of really, really going out. And interestingly enough, just that this week, the New York Times had an article and really, again, just pushing retail theft that has gotten very organized was the comment. It was December 1st. But regardless of the political affiliation or where the media organization stands, the kind of common theme is changing, which is good for all of us that are listening to this podcast because that helps drive legislation, as we know, that helps really drive all the things that we're trying to do. It also says that all of the hard work that everybody's doing here at the LPRC, and RILA and all the other organizations are starting to get recognition. And I would say
Starting point is 00:15:39 the tide is changing in the way it's been adopted. One thing, and I think we'll kind of touch on it probably again, is on the flip, there are a lot of articles that are being written also and driven from the Hill around what the root cause is. So just, you know, I think there was an article December 2nd that came out from Fox that drove the organized retail crime spike. The comment was that this was directly related to the pandemic and that the White House officially said that this theft is absolutely unacceptable. So now you're getting the White House making comments on organized retail crime, which obviously helps drive all the things we're doing. I would say in this article, they really talked about root causes being directly attributed to COVID. I don't know that I agree with that. I don't know that there's
Starting point is 00:16:35 science to actually show that, especially being that we've seen organized retail crime increase over the years. And we've seen this, we've lived it, everybody that's listening to this podcast, but the simple fact that you have the White House commenting, and, you know, the highest level of government commenting on organized retail crime really means that we're going in the right direction from a standpoint of there are people recognizing it, there are people responding to it. So more to come on it. We'll keep an eye on it. I know we constantly are talking about it here at the LPRC and on the podcast. We know it's a major issue, but I think it's important that when we see these articles, that we share them, that we talk about them because it helps drive kind of our forward motion. Now, just a couple
Starting point is 00:17:19 of news updates. We'll start with a lot of things out of the uk i think it's just interesting the privacy of laws and kind of restrictions in the eu and the uk in general are a little bit more stricter one story i won't spend a lot of time on is career view ai which is a facial recognition or facial matching service which predominantly is for law enforcement that uses publicly available photos to match uh was assessed to find in the UK from a regulatory standpoint because they did not follow direction. I think it's important to note that, again, regardless of where you stand, I think we all know that there needs to be some regulation around facial recognition. But what Clearview AI does is essentially take photos that are on the internet through social media and other places and uses it for
Starting point is 00:18:05 feature matching or facial recognition. So this goes to what we always talk about with privacy is, you know, I'm not in the middle here. I feel like if you put your picture out there on an open network to use, then it is, you know, free to be used. So whether there needs to be regulation around facial recognition, I think there needs to be regulation around facial recognition, I think there needs to be some level of regulation. But when I look at the way Clearview AI is doing what they're doing, I consistently go, what we always talk about here on this podcast is that if you're allowing your data to be shared via social media, you can't really be surprised or upset when someone uses it. There's a million
Starting point is 00:18:46 different things that say it's out there. Should there be regulation around what the use cases are? Absolutely. I know when we had LPRC impact, there was actually a pretty good segment on facial recognition that we did during impact. And I had the luxury of sitting live watching it. And there's the blurred lines between people's opinion and the law and understanding what it is. I don't think we'll see a stark switch over here in the US, the UK and EU have predominantly been more conscientious about CCTV privacy, but it's definitely something that we need to be mindful of and look at to see if those are coming. We do know there are some states in the US today that are, you know, banning the use of facial recognition. So as this technology becomes easier to adopt and
Starting point is 00:19:36 use, I think we'll continue to see some regulatory and compliance pieces. Another thing that happened in the UK, and I do think we will see this fall here, unlike this, I think you'll see a direct correlation is something we talk about often also in the podcast is Internet of Things devices and some of the risks and the increase of your digital risk footprint is why I always talk about digital risk footprint. And this is not a cybersecurity challenge. This often gets siloed into cybersecurity, but it really is a traditional asset protection or security. And it is even a consumer challenge because IoT devices are everywhere now. And if you think about it, any network device, you know, keyers on the internet of things device. And there are some
Starting point is 00:20:16 key things that we've talked about on this podcast dozens of times that I think the UK is taking a step to mandate for folks that manufacture and sell IoT devices. One is to eliminate default passwords. And this is something we are seeing with some of the commercial companies that we deal with in the camera space today, where in the past, there'd be a default password for an admin, and you'd have to go in and you'd have to change that to make sure that you weren't vulnerable. Well, the UK is saying that is no longer an option, there cannot be a default password. And basically the principle would be the first time you start the device, you would put in a password. There would be no pre-configured passwords. This eliminates a huge vulnerability. Today, a huge segment of the IoT devices have default passwords that you have to actually go in and change. And if you don't, those devices are vulnerable. If you have a router or a modem in your house that's older than five years old, there's a high likelihood're at extreme risk it means there is inherent risk if someone gets in
Starting point is 00:21:25 to your network they can actually access that device so that's one of the things that will be mandated from the UK government the other is vulnerabilities disclosed this is one of those things that I think if you think about it we would think is common play but it's not where there has to be a disclosed vulnerability and there, and there'll be some time constraints around that today. Some of the smaller companies don't necessarily just let you know when there's a vulnerability. There's also gray and what's a vulnerability, right? We talk about that with breach, the cyber incident versus cyber reach. So is it a vulnerability or is it a bug? And, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:02 all of this kind of gray semantics talk, but this is one of the things also be mandated that if there is a vulnerability or expected vulnerability, there'll have to be some level of notification. Again, sounds like common sense for the listeners though, but there's a high likelihood if you have an IoT device and it's not owned by a substantially large company that there could be very well,
Starting point is 00:22:22 that there won't be disclosed or they don't have a method to disclose it to the masses. And then another one that the UK is driving and this I'll end this piece with that and move to the next one is, you know, a commitment to updates and not just a commitment to updates, but letting users know what the life expectancy is. So I'm going to buy this today. And you can expect for X number of years, you will get support. This is one of the biggest things that I talk about when I speak or when I, even on the podcast here is when you buy an IoT device. If you buy an IoT device from a startup, there's nothing wrong with that.
Starting point is 00:22:58 You have to be mindful of what the future lifecycle management of that device looks like. Some of the really robust and fun devices that are new, startup-driven, smaller companies don't have long-standing lifecycle management programs because they're just starting out versus if you bought a camera from Hanwha, you're going to have a really, you know, a real robust roadmap of several years, if not a dozen years of this is how long the device is going to be patched. This is what we do. A lot of
Starting point is 00:23:25 IoT devices are so new that when you buy them, the company may get acquired, it may change hands, and there may be things along those lines that we need to really think about. And this goes down the route of, I'm going to talk about Bluetooth headphones in the next piece, this goes down the route of any IoT device, any connected device. So for the listeners, whether you're in a commercial or business environment or home environment, if you have a device, the majority of these devices have the ability to update, and they may not be as simple as that. So if you're using any of the higher-end Bluetooth headphones, Java, for instance, you go to their app, you're going to have an availability to update firmware. Most of the time that's for feature set, but some of that is going to be from a vulnerability standpoint. But, you know, they that iPhone, update your windows. These are huge companies doing that. Think of the, you know, the devices that you put in. And I know Rick,
Starting point is 00:24:31 Reed and I have similar kind of setups. So when I went to retails and impact, he had many of what you would say the normal kind of commercial consumer grade cameras to testing for porch piracy, I would assume. And those are devices that are perfect examples of you'd probably find that Ring and Blink have really robust patching. But if you use an offshoot device that may perform actually phenomenally, understanding what their vulnerability update process is. So I think that this story is pertinent because those things that are
Starting point is 00:25:06 being mandated in the UK are things that today, when you're making a purchase decision on an IoT device, you need to take into consideration. And this leads me to kind of the story and this Bluetooth story that was on a couple of different news articles about the vice president Kamala Harris not using Bluetooth than always using wired headphones. And I thought it, because we talk about risk, I thought it was a great story to kind of cover. And it was covered by many different outlets, but I think the place that I saw that wrote a really lengthy article was on MSN, but there were many, many reports about this. And it was just that, you know, have you ever
Starting point is 00:25:45 noticed that the vice president doesn't use Bluetooth headphones? And, you know, Politico, you know, wrote an article about this a while back. And it, the content is that, you know, Harris will only use wired headphones, because Bluetooth devices are vulnerable to attacks on malicious hackers. Now, here's kind of the reality is it's an accurate statement. You know, it's a Bluetooth device. While it is not an easy thing to hack, you know, does leave for some open, you know, vulnerabilities. And this goes back to my update conversation that we just had five seconds ago about.
Starting point is 00:26:20 If you're using a Bluetooth headphone, look and see, is it a headphone that offers firmware updates? Do you understand what version of Bluetooth it's on? The later versions have much greater, not encryption capability, although they do, but they have the ability to handle encryption faster, if you will, so you won't get latency. And I don't think Reed and I doing the podcast are worried about a nanosecond or very, very short latency but if you were doing something like a live presentation,
Starting point is 00:26:51 you know, a half a second can turn into two seconds, things like that. So the newer Bluetooth pieces really handle it well but inherently they're not connected so there is a risk and in this article,
Starting point is 00:27:01 there were a lot of, you know, the political article was basically taken and rewritten many times and there were a lot of, you know, the political article was basically taken and rewritten many times. And there were a lot of talks about the inherent principle security risks with Bluetooth. And that, you know, not only is there, you know, I felt was important, not only is it the risk in, you know, actually being able to hear the audio, but the tracking of a Bluetooth device, the ability to actually see where someone goes via the Mac addresses. So this is not a paranoia. I think if I was the vice president of the United States, I probably wouldn't use Bluetooth either. I use Bluetooth every day, all day today. But I'm not the vice president of the United States of America. So probably just a good reminder if you're talking about high-risk, or you're really concerned about security that a wireless
Starting point is 00:27:47 device, and I know this is probably common sense, offers less security than a wired peripheral. But I think the thing that people don't realize is the tracking ability. And again, this isn't your average user. I've actually done a demo live to show people how to track via Bluetooth. But it does require a higher degree of technical capability. It also requires that you need to be in somewhat close proximity to take advantage of that Bluetooth. So you're not going to do this remotely. You're going to do this on site within a couple hundred feet to be able to do it. So I just thought it was an interesting article and really kind of percolated some thoughts
Starting point is 00:28:25 around Bluetooth and what was potentially risks there. And again, not to extend paranoia, but to say if you were really having a super, super confidential conversation that you would be concerned that there was risk with that you would do that and not use Bluetooth. Or if you are like me and you travel a lot, like Reed and Tony,
Starting point is 00:28:46 understanding in certain markets, it might be a better idea to use a wired headphone. So if you're traveling to mainland China, Romania, Russia, places like that, where you have a higher degree of potential risk, then bring that wired headset along with you. Again, I tend to use Bluetooth for convenience, but I tend to keep my super confidential calls to you in person whenever possible.
Starting point is 00:29:12 And then last, but certainly not least, because I think we've touched on this. I think we were early adopters of the podcast. I'm always very excited when we cover news before major news networks. And sometimes that leads us to getting misinformation, but we're really good about staying on top of it. But we've talked about several weeks ago, you know, cybersecurity and technology leaders meeting with, you know, the White House and really coming up with ways to help work in this collusion and partnership community effort, very similar to the LPRC. And just last week, there was a meeting again with President Biden's cybersecurity leaders that went out to Silicon Valley technology companies and had a collaboration meeting
Starting point is 00:29:58 of how the government can work closer with technology companies. And this reminds me very much of how we work with the government when we're talking about organized retail crime, meeting with people. It's a lot of networking. It's a lot of talking. But the key here is, as these conversations happen, network relationships happen. And then in the long term, this really will help build a more robust cybersecurity defense. So you had folks from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, as well as the National Cybersecurity Director, meet with folks from Google, Media and AI, a lot of the cybersecurity specific companies, as well as the big tech companies to continue the narrative of working
Starting point is 00:30:45 together and taking, you know, for-profit companies and, you know, putting them directly in connection with the Department of Homeland Security to develop more robust solutions to help combat some of the cybersecurity-related challenges that we're facing today. That clearly, you know, this is a statement that I would be willing to say is factually backed based on all the numbers that clearly has, the attacks have clearly increased, you know, during the COVID, the last 80 weeks, they were on a huge rise, but, you know, business compromise, email, ransomware attacks, and, you know, zero day attacks have increased significantly because of the demands on, you know, private sector using computing and anecdotally you can ruin some of that to remote work but I also think that cyber criminals are smart and they're taking advantage of the fact that there's a lot going on and it's easy to be distracted in these times so very exciting from that forefront will continue to monitor this because I do think,
Starting point is 00:31:44 time. So very exciting from that forefront. We'll continue to monitor this because I do think, you know, when we start to see this transition over into the public-private sector, you'll see the joint cyber defense collaboration probably working directly with retailers because we know retailers are huge targets for some of these cybersecurity events because of the data they have. So we'll continue to watch that. With that, I will turn it back over to Reid. All right. Thanks so much for all that, Tom. Let me go ahead and let's turn this over to Tony D'Onofrio. Tony, take it away. Thank you very much. Let me start this week with some data from Europe where I happen to be sitting right now in London. I want to start with some data in terms of what happened in the UK around Black Friday as they do to have a shopping holiday around Black Friday. This data is actually from Sensomatic Solutions from their latest research. In the UK, 79% had planned to start Christmas shopping before the beginning in December, with a third starting gift buying in November, which was up 7% compared to 2020. Despite not reaching pre-pandemic levels, Christmas has started to come early for
Starting point is 00:33:00 retailers who welcomed the Black Friday boost to trade that traditionally marks the start of the festive season. Over the past 12 months, we have seen a slow but steady resurgence of in-store shopping as consumer confidence has grown in person. And again, these are trends we're seeing in the rest of the world, including the United States in terms of more confidence to walk into stores. Compared to 2020, UK November has continued to show strong year-on-year performance within the retail sector, a steady upward trend across the month as pre-Christmas shopping gained momentum
Starting point is 00:33:40 and which led to a peak on Black Friday week of plus 216%. Despite the 2020 year-on-year increase, comparisons to 2019 presented an inverse trend. Despite the benchmark figure early in the week looking to provide an optimistic look, the trend quickly began to show an increasing deficit. A combination of poor weather and less discounting than in previous year may have contributed to Black Friday being down 23% and Saturday being down 22% remain much further away from recovery than expected. Sensomatic and their research continues to see a significant uplift in mall traffic numbers compared to 2020.
Starting point is 00:34:30 Traffic numbers do continue to remain below pre-COVID trading conditions. While the decline in the UK traffic trends remained consistent versus 2019, trading did decline further going into the weekend. The largest decrease occurred on traffic on Black Friday, minus 34%, followed by Sunday, minus 29%. The deteriorating weather caused by storm Irwin is likely to deter some shoppers
Starting point is 00:35:03 who instead prefer to take advantage of online deals. So there's a little bit in terms of what happened in the UK during Black Friday and that shopping weekend. Some good data was also published by Reuters in terms of what's happening to overall retail sales across Europe. This was just published last week. sales which is again is a proxy of consumer demand in the 19 countries that shared the eurozone gained 0.2 percent for the month in october which is the latest data provided across all those countries and were up 1.4 percent from a year earlier economists pulled by reuters that expected increases of respectively 0.2% and 1.2%, so slightly above in terms of the overall year-to-date increase by matching the forecast
Starting point is 00:35:54 for the month. With energy prices having soared and coronavirus infection rising, resulting in renewed restriction, consumers are expected to become more cautious in the coming months. Consumer sentiment declined for the second consecutive month in November, as surveyed by the European Commission showed last week, with households less upbeat about their intentions to make major purchases and about the general economic situation. I can attest by arriving here earlier in the week in the UK, much tougher to get into the country, many more restrictions going into effect this week in terms of
Starting point is 00:36:36 all getting into the country and also some restrictions now in terms of how we act in terms of indoors and even shopping. So it'll be interesting to see what this does for the rest of this holiday season. And let me close with the latest global economic forecast just issued by Euromonitor for Q4, 2021 and 2022. The latest data from Euromonitor says that after contracting by 3.1% in 2020,
Starting point is 00:37:09 global gross domestic product or GDP is forecast to increase by 5.7% in 2021 and 4.6% in 2022. The global economic outlook at the end of 2021 remains constrained by an ongoing mismatch between consumer demand and the availability of certain services due to the rises in COVID-19 infections and restrictions, in addition to mismatch between the speed of recovery in demand and the rebound in global supply. The U.S. economy output has recovered to its pre-Q4 2019 levels, though remains below the pre-pandemic levels at the end of 2021. Real GDP growth for the U.S. has been significantly downgraded since mid-year 2021 to 5.5% for the year and 4.3% in 2022 due to the emergence of the Delta variant
Starting point is 00:38:09 in a population where 40% are still not vaccinated. As the Euromonitor reports, another factor limiting the speed of recovery in the second half of 2021 in the US are shortages of supplies and decline in consumer confidence, both leading to increased commodity prices and higher general cost of living. However, the newly enacted physical stimulus packages are expected to contribute significantly and boost the economy recovery in 2022. In the Eurozone, real GDP is expected to increase 4.9% in this year and 4.3% in 2022. The forecast upgrade mainly reflects a better than expected Eurozone recovery during Q2 and Q3, especially for consumer spending. Real GDP in the Eurozone, again, these are the countries covered by the Euros, which are those 19 countries, increased by 2.2% quarter-on-quarter
Starting point is 00:39:13 in Q3 2021, largely driven by relaxation in social distance restriction and an increase in private sector confidence, coupled with higher rates of savings accumulated during the early stages of the pandemic. However, economic recovery in Q4 is expected to slow down as a result of supply-side constraints, rising energy prices, and the emergence of a fourth wave of COVID-19. Key supply bottlenecks include shortages of raw materials, intermediate media inputs such as semiconductors, and labor shortages across several sectors. So it'll be interesting to see what Omicron does to all these economies as we lead up to Christmas
Starting point is 00:40:04 and what it does to all the optimistic as we lead up to Christmas and what it does to the optimistic forecast for the holiday season. But overall, I still see a strong year this year, and I continue strong year next year for retail and global economies. And with that, let me turn it over to the rest of the team. Thank you. All right. Well, again, thank you so much, Tony. And thank you, Tom, for the amazing insights. And one thing I wanted to kind of pick up on that you mentioned, Tom, was how different entities have talked about the pandemic is the cause or the reason
Starting point is 00:40:37 for what we're seeing in the moment here. And that's these very large scale, seemingly impromptu, but somewhat coordinated, clearly, attacks on retailers where groups will pour into the store with sledgehammers, cutting tools, and other weapons, and just carry off armloads, garbage bags full, and so on of stolen goods. And so like you say, that really the idea has been growing over the years and certainly over months, but it's hard to find any kind of mechanism
Starting point is 00:41:14 connection between the pandemic and this and how the erosion of consequences and the changes and some of the cultural things that we're seeing out there may explain some of the variants or the reason that we're seeing this. But whenever anybody, any of us, me included, anybody says something simple, we kind of say around here in our labs, don't walk, run from them because there is no simple issue and certainly, unfortunately, no simple answer. issue. And certainly, unfortunately, no simple answer. Things are a little complicated. They're not soundbites. So I appreciate your insights on that. And I think we couldn't agree more. We've got some work to do. And we need to do it together. And we need to do it rigorously. And we need to do it continuously because we've got to keep updating and keeping solutions
Starting point is 00:42:00 fresh and highly effective. So thanks to everybody. And thanks to you all that are out there listening. Please pass this podcast on. Rate us, if you will. You hear that a lot on podcasts. But this is for you. We need your insights. We need your input, your questions, your comments, certainly your suggestions and ideas. And everybody stay safe out there. And again, and ideas. And everybody stay safe out there. And again, on behalf of the LPRC and the Crime Science Podcast team, thank you, Tony. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Diego. And thank you, y'all. 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.
Starting point is 00:42:46 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.

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