LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 87 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

LPRC Team will be in NYC! LPRC has input on Shoplifting Escalation! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss the winning and losing country economies during COVID-19, iPhone messaging vs Androids, silicon and chip shortages continue, and the top 25 predictions for 2022. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 87 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 Crime Science, the podcast brought to you by the LPRC and Bosch. And this is the latest in our weekly update series. I'm joined by my collaborators and co-hosts, Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan and our producer Diego Rodriguez. And we're going to kind of take a quick trip around the world here, talk a little bit about this crazy ongoing and sometimes very dangerous COVID-19 global pandemic. We of course see now

reports in the United States of those testing positive simultaneously for flu and COVID-19. Fluorona is on the tablet. And so that seems to be something that's a new development and interesting. also seeming to appear in some people simultaneously, those variants, other variants of Delta and Omicron seemingly being reported. So we know again, that there are a lot of us humans and other animals that are harboring the virus and that those reservoirs were all reservoirs for a lot of radical development mutations and things like that. So that's all happening right now. As according to media reports, we see more and more reports about why the Omicron variant seems to be less virulent or dangerous on average for those that contract it.

And again, it looks like in large part because it seems to be less effective at infecting lung tissue, lung cells than earlier variants like Delta, Delta plus and so on. And so may not be quite as dangerous, seems to mostly attack the nasal ferrule area as well as the throat.

In other words, doesn't seem to go that deeply in. And so it seems that that's part of the reason that the CDC has issued shorter quarantine and isolation times, at least for vaccinated people. Vaccinated people seem to have less serious disease, as well as shorter duration, according to some of the research I was looking at than earlier variants of this particular virus. We're also seeing that state infection rates are backing this up, what was reported down in South Africa, other African countries. And then as the virus moved to UK and Europe and other places that they're seeing a lot of hospitalizations and we're seeing a lot of hospitalization. In fact, in some areas,

it's still overwhelming. But in great part, those are due to just the sheer volume of us that are getting this Omicron because it's just very, very, very transmissible. Evidently, some research shows just a slight whiff of the air that has some of the particles is enough to do it. So it doesn't take maybe as many particles or as well as, again, it seemed to be a lot more particles in the air put out by us during breathing, talking, coughing, sneezing. To be whiffed, ingested by another person on board. You're seeing that on the deaths, though, that as a rate of hospitalization seem to be dramatically down, and certainly as what they're talking about infection, or at least reported case rates, seems to be much less deadly. Again, going back to some of the data, a lot of data pointing to the lack of the lung damage,

according to, well, it looks like four or five reports right here. Also, the CDC is reporting that of the deaths that are occurring, and they did some pretty large-scale tracking of patients, 98% of those deaths are non-vaccinated people. That confirms what all the phase one, two, and three testing around the world have shown repeatedly that despite everything, and even including Omicron, that the vaccination elevates our antibodies. And it seems to have that, remember we talked about T and B cell cellular activity that's sufficient to dampen down the effects of the disease,

severity and duration. So the vaccines seem to continue to work not quite as well as some of us would like, but they're there to, again, reduce serious disease. The effects of getting the infection, not getting the infection in the first place. So there's a lot of studies I've been looking at around T cells, the cellular activity we just talked about, in addition to antibodies, because we showed that antibodies do wane from natural infection. They wane from vaccine-induced immunization. vaccinated, vaccine-induced immunization. And so that's been the big debate. And how well do the T cells function to take over if there's not enough sufficient antibody activity or the Omicron and other variants just seem to escape that, or they're able to evade the antibody protection

of that pathogen. And so, you know, they're trying, it looks like the T cells are working in a lot of cases, both from natural infection, as well as from vaccine-induced immunization or immunity. And so, but they act, again, we've talked about this in two ways. They kill infected cells that are affected by this COVID-19 disease that then become little machines pumping out and infecting others. They kill those before they can do that or so they can't do it anymore. They also, though, will assist the B cells by helping them produce or produce more of the antibodies. And then there seems to be a third wave that I'm trying to understand as I read through the literature as a criminologist. trying to understand as I read through the literature as a criminologist, right? So the other thing is that some very interesting development is there's some research out

showing that common cold, we know that we get that virus and that, and there are at least four or more of the common colds that we get annually. And some of us have them now, our children do anyway. And those are, some of those again are coronavirus, some are rhinovirus and other types of colds. But regardless of these common cold T cells are generated as part of the whole of our immune response. And it looks like those also though can help send off COVID or reduce the severity of COVID-19 disease. So very interesting. Turning real quickly here to the vaccine front, you know, still over a hundred plus vaccines out there. We'll talk a little bit about this real quickly here that, you know, what people are looking for and hoping for

in vaccine development over time, but with a hundred plus candidates in human clinical trials and then dozens and dozens more in preclinical development, what they're looking at, we're looking at right now, 51 in phase one candidates, 49 vaccine candidates in phase two, 44 now in phase three large scale trials. We now have 19 with vaccines that are now have emergency use authorization around the world. I see that Novavax now has some European emergency use authorization. Again, a different type of technology than the J&J, different type of technology than the mRNA vaccines by Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna. And so those are coming along pretty well. Of course, we've got the nine vaccines that are fully authorized after all the data and all the assessment and evaluation by the governmental and advisory panels around the U.S. and the world. So it looks like the CDC has come out and is recommending all of the three that we've got,

but that they recommend that those that are looking for the vaccine or booster and so on, I believe was what we're looking at here, that the mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, are recommended over the Johnson & Johnson or J&J version. So that's what the CDC has come out with recently. But looking at panels of experts and trying to read through this again, how do we move on and get to a better, higher place as far as resuming some type of activity that we would all rather be doing? That one, looking at how is there going to be an anti-infection vaccine available. There are studies that show that these mRNA and other vaccines can provide some of that, but they

don't provide very much. We all know they're there designed to reduce the severity of the disease that we get from the virus. And so that's going to be critical. And that's the big hope with these 100 plus, as well as the existing ones that they could maybe be modified to again, provide more anti-infection in the way that some of these like polio vaccines and others that have just been amazing game changers, as much as a game changer as these vaccines have been, but they just even reduce the probability of being infected in the first place, not just the severity of the infection. So the second is that the way to engineer and generate the innate and adaptive immune systems of us so that they are

effective against all these different mutations that are inevitable, especially with so many people that are infected around the world, as well as other animal reservoirs being available, that this will probably be like these other coronaviruses and other types of viruses endemic always exist in society. But how much are they in the background or in the foreground is the key, right? So reducing infections, being effective against a wider variety or rapidly or not so rapidly changing and evolving virus or set of viruses. The third is, again, cheaper, faster testing. You know, we need to be able, if we feel something that on our own can test and get an idea, do we have a common cold? Do we have some sort of influenza or do we have RSV or is this some type of coronavirus on our own

more rapidly and inexpensively than we can right now? And we saw that was kind of a major fall down in 2021 going into 22 was that despite the advice, I guess, evidently we're reading that that wasn't done, that the testing wasn't put forward like I guess it could be, but is now taking place or is being ramped up to do. We heard last week about that a little bit. And then finally, cheaper, faster therapies. We see, again, Pfizer and Merck have versions, as well as more and more emerging of all different types of repurposed drugs and other therapies that are available in addition

to those pill forms that seem to be very convenient, will be relatively affordable, but they're still being ramped up the production of them. But those are going to be reduced infection through a new type of vaccine or modified vaccine being more effective against a wide variety of viral mutations that are going to occur, that we have cheaper, faster testing. And then, of course, therapies if we are infected or, you know, our test says, looks like we're infected. So we go and we can take a handful of pills for just a few days. All right.

So moving over to the LPRC front, like everything, and this is why we talk so much about this crazy pandemic and that we're still right now, Chad McIntosh and myself, Chad being our COO at the LPRC, planning to be in New York City for the big show that Sunday through Wednesday, ending the 19th of January. Again, we're still planning on being there, being on this panel, the NRF panel, on leveraging cost-effective practical AI in the form of computer vision at the self-checkout and elsewhere. So we shall see. But as of today, we're still green-lighted to go up in there. We're not sure the numbers of the big show. If it started off around 40 and maybe around 20 or 10 or 15,000, we're not sure what that's going to look like when we get up in there. But if you're interested in learning more about the NREF Big Show, these panels, and certainly about the LPRC kickoff, operations at lpresearch.org is the email of choice. And of course, stay tuned on LPRC, our website, that is lpresearch.org. A lot of research, a lot of things going on. We had the new director of the University of Florida Center for Retailing and

the chair of the UF's Warrington College of Business Marketing Department in yesterday for some brainstorming to plan some of the co-research and events there. And we're excited about that. We always want to include what we call the green space, you know, not just look at the red space, the bad guy, the theft, fraud, and violence, and include that in there. LPRC, in addition to having two new criminologists joining the team in February, which we're very excited about, and we're doing some onboarding with them this week virtually. And we're going to be looking

for a third new criminologist to join the team as we grow. But we're also excited that we're going to be looking for a data scientist, and then also a tech person, somebody that's good at networking and things like that, tying things together. We talked about they know Red from Fiery. So LPRC continues to grow in membership of retailers. We've talked to several in the last two weeks. I'm pretty excited about them joining as well as looking at, of course, the UK we've talked about and up in Canada, expansion there of the LPRC and a lot of really high quality solution partners that have joined or are joining. So we're excited to announce all that. A lot more technologies in the labs. We're getting ready to deploy a couple more things out in the overall Safer Places lab outside our ecosystem there, our living laboratory.

So with no further ado, let me head on over to Tony D'Onofrio. And if you could, Tony, take it away. Thank you very much, Reid. And I do have a cold this week, so my voice is going to be a little rough. And I appreciate what you said about calls and COVID. So hopefully it will help in terms of what happens next. But let me start this week with a great article that was published in CNN. And the article was titled, Shoplifting is Surging Across America with Dangerous and Costly Consequences.

is surging across America with dangerous and costly consequences. And really what was interesting in there is all the highlights on the recent smashing grabs, but more importantly, our own LPRC Dr. Corey Lowe was quoted extensively, and I'm going to quote him as I do a summary of that article. As he said, these are people who are making a living stealing and reselling. This is not a one-time opportunistic or need-based robbery. And he's talking about all those smash and grabs that were taking place. Lowell said retailers are very worried about the escalation in these organized group led

smash and grab robberies in multiple cities across Costa countries. The anatomy of these attacks show that they are more aggressive, dangerous, and happen more frequently. When I talk to retail loss prevention veterans, the best comparison I come up with is crime in New York in the 1970s. But even then, it was more street robberies and not like retail theft as bracing as this. Another consultant had an interesting stat in the same article. He said that for every $330 worth of stolen items, retailers must sell an incremental $300,000 worth of goods to break even. And this has made it up, Taft and this type of Taft has made it up all the way up to the CEO suite. Best Buy CEO Corey Berry in November said that a retailer has seen a jump in Taft in his stores by gang of thieves.

Somebody in this have involved weapons such as guns and crowbar. And as she's quoted, this is traumatizing for our associates and is unacceptable. We are doing everything we can to try to create a safe and as possible environment. Although this has been around for a while, post-COVID, it seems to have escalated. And Corey, again, points out the mask wearing, pre-pandemic, whoever thought about everyone coming into a store wearing a mask and allowing them to remain anonymous. So a congruence of factors have contributed to the spike of retail robberies in the last two years. staffing, less in-store staffing, which leads to less surveillance, and the ease with which it tees benefit from the lack of regulation on reselling these items online. And really what's happening, retailers I'm awarding in the pandemic seem to have accelerated. In a survey of 55 retailers, more than two-thirds of the pandemic increased the overall risk of fraud and crime for their companies, according to the NRF National Security Survey.

The report said that 57% of retailers surveyed indicate as a rise in organized retail crime during the pandemic. Some 50% of retailers surveyed reported an average dollar value loss of merchandise of at least $1,000 in 2020 compared to only 29% in 2019. Overall organized retail crime cost retailers an average of $700,000 per billion in sales, according to NRA. So major problem. Good to see that LPRC is very active in the press in terms of both telling the story, but more importantly, doing science-based research to combat the problem. Switching topics on a better note, if you think about what happened during COVID-19, which economies they're better than others, which country economies they're better than others based on GDP changes and selected OEDCD countries

between Q4 2019 and Q3 2021. So the winner is, so the top three, but the winner is Ireland. They grew 22% during that period number two was chile they grew uh just over 10 percent and noro was number three they grew three and a half percent the top three losers in the pandemic in terms of these large economies was spain which should decline 6.6 percent portugal which declined 3.2%, and the UK which declined 2.1%. And then finally, I love always tracking predictions at the beginning of the year to see what is actually we think is going to happen for the year. And Visual Capitalist had a really

great summary of their top 25 predictions and I'm going to briefly highlight each very quickly. So the predictions are rich countries will move from pandemic to the endemic phase with COVID. Big tech will get bigger. The creator economy will flourish. Expect a highly unequal global recovery. Ransomware will ramp up. Social commerce picks up steam. Inflation slowly eases off. Regulation is coming to crypto. They are bullish on European and Japanese equities.

The Meta's universe, and this is Facebook's plan, will fall flat. So it's not going to go anywhere. Climate change is back in the spotlight. The growing influence of environmental, social, and government factors increase volatility. China will have a rocky start in 2022. Unshoring trends continue, so more manufacturing coming back to the home country. Interest rates will go up. You will be hearing a lot about NFTs and Web3. Continued growth of crypto.

Supply chain disruptions will ease off, but slowly expect a 4% to 5% global GDP growth. It will be another banner year for electric cars. Industrial real estate remains hot. Modest gains for equities this year. Shifting labor dynamics with workers in the driver's seat. And finally, geopolitical tensions will flare up. Based on all those predictions, at least what they summarize based on looking at all kinds of forecasts for the global economies will keep growing,

but not at the same rates as it did in 2021. World GDP will be up 4.5%. US will be up 4. Eurozone 4.3 and China 5.3. So good news overall. I expect continued change, but most of it looks like it's going to be positive change. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Tony, and thank you, Rita. Just as Tony, I'm getting over actually COVID, not a cold, so I'm a little congested. So I apologize about my voice. And a couple of

things just starting because COVID was a topic, and I know we've talked about this many times when it came to fake vaccination cards and fake vaccines. And as you would probably suspect, there is a rash of fake and false rapid tests available on the internet. The challenge with this, unlike the vaccines and therapeutics and fake vaccination cards is obviously if you're buying a fake vaccination card, you know, when you're buying a vaccine, it's very, it's very clear that generally a vaccine is not available online where rapid tests are. So you have a little bit different of a challenge here when you're searching for a rapid test as a consumer or a business person, you really have to do a little bit more due diligence because you can find a rapid test

that essentially for all intents and purposes looks pretty legitimate and isn't. So the FDA has put a whole bunch of guidelines out there. Unfortunately, the FDA's guidelines aren't necessarily realistic in today's pandemic. Their first comment was do the best to get your tests only from your doctors. Well, we know that today, Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, a lot of really reputable places sell antigen tests. ControlTech sells antigen tests. There's a lot of places that sell antigen tests. Control Tech sells antigen tests. There's a lot of places that sell antigen tests today that are legitimate businesses that have FDA approved tests that go through the process to make sure that what they're

selling is safe. Unfortunately, if you just went and did a Google search today, there is a likelihood and it couldn't, at this particular date, it's a high likelihood that the tests that are available online are either fraudulent or repurposed. So I'm not talking about, you know, e-com fencing where someone steals good tests and reselling them. I'm talking about someone fabricating a test to make it look like it's real or it's not. Or the other concern is a company who doesn't have the means to create a test in the accurate manner and goes ahead and makes an antigen test that isn't approved or hasn't actually been tested scientifically. So this is a major challenge.

There are literally millions of fake tests available today. The FDA has actually posted several methods to validate known bad tests. So you can actually look on the FDA site to say this is not a good test. Again, the challenge with that is when you're talking about the potential for taking something to see if you're sick, the malice there could be that someone replicates a test to make it look, read, and be as real as you would. So like always, do the due diligence. If you're buying from a website that's not reputable, that's not recognized, that's new in fashion, then you may want to think again about buying that test. It's just, unfortunately, this is part of the things that we've seen with COVID all along. This is, in this day and age, I would say take the extra 30 seconds,

see how long the website's been around, and then do that minute or two of research to say, hey, this is a really new website. That's kind of one of the first indicators that could be a challenge. Where is the test coming from? And this is also important to note is this is not a scam where someone, you go in and give your credit card information and they don't ship you something. They're going to ship, in some cases, what looks like a very legitimate test. So you have to really keep in mind that this is not a ploy to get your money and not send you something. You're going to get something, you're going to get tracking. Generally, some of these sites even have robust customer service departments because, again, as we've always talked about, in order to

garner people coming back, you need reviews, it's a long game. You need to continue to drive people to your site. No one benefits if they only have a few sales. So we'll continue to monitor this. I'll work with Diego to potentially post some of the known fake tests that they're identifying. One of the interesting things when I went to look through the list of FDA is some of them are clearly not real tests. Common sense would come in right away to go like, that's not a test by the naming, by the bottles. And then when you read some of the descriptions and you dig deeper, you can even read that some of these websites are saying this is not an approved test. This is not an approved by the FDA and this may not be accurate. So some of the websites are even taking the approach of saying, um, this is,

this is just a not, this test is a novelty test. So just something to keep in mind. We continue to see fake vaccination cards, fake test results, um, at a large number, especially when you have cities and municipalities requiring vaccination. So I think that will continue to happen. It isn't as prevalent as it was, I think, when we reported on it a few months back, but they're still there. And that leads me to D.C., another big metropolitan area requiring vaccinations for status for anybody over 12. So as of January 15th in DC, you will need a vaccination card if you're over 12 years old to go into a restaurant or a club and dine. So this is one of those things that it drives that fakes vaccination. I think it's sports venues, gyms, nightclubs, conference centers. You have to show that proof of at least one shot. Um,

and that that's going to continue to keep happening. So I think that when, when we, as we continue to drive these, we'll continue to see some of these fake vaccination cards and fake tests pop up and all of those things. So switching gears a little bit, I thought there was some really interesting stuff. Unfortunately, I missed last week's recording. So some of this is about a week and a half old, but T-Mobile released kind of what their blocking, their call blocking looked like. So they actually, T-Mobile in 2021 blocked 421 million spam calls per week for a total of 21 billion, billion with a B, scam calls. That's a pretty alarming number. We see all of these apps and all these ways to stop spam calls, but to think that the phone carrier blocked 21 billion calls. AT&T also said that they blocked

over 16 billion suspicious calls since 2016. And Verizon said that they protected 78 million customers from 13 billion unwanted calls through their call filtering service. So robo-spam calls continue to be a challenge, whether you're an Android or an iPhone user, you have the ability to block calls. But I can say that me personally, who am on the phone all day long, there isn't a day that goes by now that I don't get multiple robo calls. I've had my phone number for more than 15, probably 25 years now, phone number for more than 15, probably 25 years now, literally since the mid-90s. And I get multiple calls a day. So when I'm thinking of Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile blocking this many and still having multiple get through, it's pretty crazy to really think of that magnitude.

I think we'll continue to see machine learning and algorithms to help block these spam calls for us. I think if you're today using any carrier, you probably get that message, that potential spam call. And you have some services actually offering verified, saying that this person is verified, not a spam call, to help kind of that this person is verified, not a spam call, to help kind of thawed off some of the spam calls. And unfortunately, in the mix of those spam calls are also nefarious actors. So it's definitely one of those things to keep an eye on and continue to monitor as individuals. One of the things I yearn for the day where I don't have to worry about picking the phone up, I answer the call regardless of it. If I don't recognize the number

because I'm in business, I'm sure Reed and Tony are in the same position. It'll be great that the day that I don't have to answer the phone in here, that I want a vacation to somewhere or that my car's warranty has expired every single day. I'm waiting for the day where we can get to the point where I can answer the phone and know that that's not going to happen on a regular basis. Interesting around the chip shortages. I know we talked about this a couple of different times. We're starting to see a trend in the automobile space, as well as some of the larger consumer electronics space,

where folks are dealing directly with chip manufacturers or trying to fabricate or partner in a fabrication process. So GM is looking to buy chips directly as the shortage continues to help drive that down. That is not the normal process. Generally, you have brokers for chips. It isn't productive usually for a manufacturer to buy chips directly. It actually sometimes slows the process down, but we're already starting to see major manufacturers of cars and electronics going directly to the source and negotiating deals as well as, in some cases cases buying sections of the factory. And what I mean by that is they'll go to a chip fabricator and say,

we'll literally pay for these, these machines. If you only run chips for us. I believe that this will continue to be a challenge for us for several, for several months. I don't think this is, my prediction is that it'll, it'll run right into 2023, where we won't see real relief until then, as everything throughout the supply chain adjusts. And with the fourth and fifth waves of COVID, I still think this is a challenge for all of us. And we are seeing this directly hit the pocketbook and wallet of all of the consumers. If you look at car auto prices, that's a good indication it's up. And globally, with the exception of Japan, and I'll do a little bit more research because I just read an article

on this, most countries are seeing similar challenges with the chip increase. And there isn't an end in sight in the price increases at this point. We haven't seen a peak. So we'll continue to monitor that because it does affect everything we do. Because as we all know, the majority of household products that we use today, refrigerators, microwaves, stoves, washing machines, all have computers in them. So chips are really in everything. And when we think about silicon, it really isn't just about all of the items we use today. So it does affect everything. And because this is a global mash chip shortage, it affects even the lower end devices because it's a raw component issue. So we'll continue to monitor it.

I can tell you that in our space here for the listeners here, a lot of the items that retailers are using today, IoT devices, edge computing for cameras are more challenging to source. Doesn't mean they're impossible to get, but there's longer delays than it has before. And then I saw a really interesting article related to the iPhone, and I thought I would just talk about it a little bit because I thought it was interesting and it has to do with teens and the adoption of the Apple phone because of the iMessaging service.

And the article really talks about how the green text bubble that occurs when you're on the iPhone and talking to someone without an iPhone is driving teams to Apple because of their iMessage feature. And it's an interesting kind of dynamic of when you think of app usage and ease of use in text messaging, of when you think of app usage and ease of use and text messaging, some of those in-parent iOS features are really being driven. And one of this article really stemmed around why Apple's iMessage is winning teens and the dreaded green text bubble. And what it was was basically a bunch of teens talking about how in their group chat,

it was harder for people to communicate and understand what, you know, what was going on when someone was on an Android device. So they actually, the Wall Street Journal did this article and really talked about how it's the article starts off by a group message where someone calls out, who's the green bubble? So as we look at feature sets in iPhone versus Android, this is one of these interesting ones. Why am I talking about it today? Because some of the simplest communication tools like color coding a message to let someone know that you received it are the things that customers are really looking for today. And there has been some talk about iMessage being available on Android, but that does not look like it will ever happen because it would take the exclusivity away. WhatsApp does have some of the same features, but because it's under the the facebook umbrella there are some people with privacy concerns i use both but the interesting part here is that people are making decisions

not on functionality but just the color of the messaging to designate what it is in this case it isn't necessarily keeping up with the joneses or having the latest and greatest phone as much as some of the feature sets like knowing when the message is delivered, knowing that someone is typing a message are really what drive it. So I'm going to stick close to these type of stories and kind of bring them up because I think they're interesting that the adoption of an operating system for phone is being driven by color. It really talks to human behavior and human psyche. And then the last story that I'm going to talk about, very, very high level is, and I think Tony mentioned it in his piece when he was talking about some of the top trends,

is the geopolitical impact that we need to be aware of. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast, but not in detail. While we're in the US dealing with COVID, there are a lot of really volatile situations throughout the globe right now. You have Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, many, many, huge events occurring. And when we look at the fusion net, we look at social media monitoring and active intelligence gathering, we do see spikes of chatter of potential, and this is far out to the left, potential civil unrest related to events happening outside of the United States. So we'll continue to look at that. I did see a fair amount of chatter. One of the things that I think is important to note is that in

both of the things that are occurring right now, the internet is shut off, essentially, in these places. So people have to go around, but as they do, they, they really do sometimes wake up some of these groups that are anti-government. I did see some posts over the weekend saying that, you know, if the United States government tried to turn off the internet, you know, what would happen? A lot of it is again, often to left with very limited credibility or concern, but it's important to note that those volatile events can change on a dime and really a small group can turn into something larger. There is chatter about unrest and anti-government protests based on things that are happening globally. And I do think that as we

go down the path, we'll continue to see that, especially when you look at the Netherlands with anti-corona restrictions. When you compare the Netherlands to Kyrgyzstan or the Ukraine, you couldn't be any further apart in the Netherlands of the way the government runs. So the potential for that to bleed over to the U.S. while it's very small is there. So we'll continue to monitor that. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Reid. All right. Thanks so much, Tom, for all that good insight. Thank you, Tony. And thank you for Dr. Corey Lowe for your insights on the CNN article. We seem to be doing quite a few interviews here recently with the flash robs going on, but trying to help people understand that a little bit of research,

a little bit of science is what's called for to better focus, to gain some precision and effectiveness. And as an aside, we were just conferring on up in New York City where they've got a new mayor, a New York NYPD commissioner, but also a new DA. And now we see some dialogue back and forth between the new NYPD commissioner and DA about philosophy and style. But what we're not seeing is either side or anybody talking about the research evidence. What's the logic model that explains why a DA might stop prosecuting for a whole host of potentially very dangerous crimes where people are seriously harmed? What's the logic model and what's the rigorous research evidence that might support that type of a dramatic change in prosecution policy? support that type of a dramatic change in prosecution policy. At the same time, though, NYPD, it would be great for them to propose the same thing. Well, here's the logic model about why we do this, and then here's research evidence that supports why you should not stop prosecuting

for these crimes, how that might endanger citizens. So community safety is critical, and so is science and evidence-based practice for all of us, all of us to get a little better. So I want to thank everybody for tuning in today. We're always looking for your questions, your comments, your suggestions at operations at lpresearch.org. I want to again thank Tony, Tom, and Diego, and most of all, all of you all that are listening. So stay safe and stay in touch. 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.