LAAORCA Article Featured In LP Magazine With the LAAORCA Golf Tournament on February 15th and the 3rd Annual Conference on February 16th (contact George Torres at 562-233-0916 for sponsorship opportunities) quickly approaching, LP Magazine has featured an article about this noteworthy organization in their current issue. The article is an in-depth dive into the formation and operation of this group. The article, "LAAORCA Taking a Bite Out of Organized Retail Crime" by Adam Paul, discusses the collaborative efforts of law enforcement and retailers and the successes that have spawned through the formation of the coalition.  Thank you Jason Gonzales, Organized Retail Crime Investigations and Loss Prevention District Manager for Rite Aid for sharing this. Click here for full article.

Shoplifting rings target grocery-list items and Prince George's special retail crime unit has helped stop $10 million in 9 months. Prince George's police lieutenant: One store lost about $15K per month from Tide detergent thefts alone. With the Washington-Baltimore region sitting just a rung or two from the top-10 areas in the nation for organized retail theft, police and stores are girding to curb shoplifting, which is expected to pick up during the holiday season. Prince George’s County police, in particular, have organized to get ahead of the problem, which increasingly includes the theft of grocery-list items shamelessly wheeled out the front door in bulk. Laundry detergent, shaving blades, infant formula and diapers might not seem like real attractive bounty, but for thieves who manage to slip in and out with cartloads from several stores a day, sometimes aided by lookouts and accomplices who distract busy workers, they can be solid gold, police and retailers say. "This is big money," said Prince George’s police Lt. Bradley S. Pyle, who leads a new section focused on retail theft that the county formed in March. One Safeway store lost about $15,000 per month from thefts of Tide detergent alone, Pyle said. Before, it was easy for investigators at the district-level, where shoplifting was being handled, to be too overwhelmed by shootings and dangerous crimes to focus on the problem, said Pyle, a former investigative supervisor for District 3 in Palmer Park. The biggest thing that woke us up to it was that the county executive [Rushern Baker (D)] has been trying to get more businesses in the county, and stores said they needed one place to turn to deal with their needs," Pyle said. Managers worried about lawsuits and the danger of confronting thieves often direct employees not to intervene, even if they see or suspect that goods going out the door weren’t purchased. Since the Prince George’s special retail crime unit got started nine months ago, it has investigated the shoplifting of about $10 million worth of goods, Pyle said. To help retailers during the holiday season, Pyle said his unit is working directly with stores’ loss-prevention employees and has stepped up surveillance. In fact, surveillance and undercover work, planned in consultation with the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office, enabled Prince George’s police to apprehend men involved in large thefts of Tide detergent from Wegman’s in Glenarden, then get one of them to talk about other thefts and where the goods were sold. One business caught in the investigation, which ran from late October into early November, was World Nails on Landover Road in Hyattsville, where, according to Detective Harrison Sprague, the salon’s associates paid $85 for nearly $1,200 worth of goods, including detergent, shower gel and razors. The way a lot of these criminals think is that a person dealing a couple of dollars in Tide is going to be overlooked," Sprague said. "But we’re seeing a bigger picture that wasn’t being seen before — that it adds up to an astronomical value." By sending out officers undercover and flipping thieves they capture to help law enforcement, police hope to stop more "booster" rings before they steal, Pyle said. Although Montgomery County police report that shoplifting incidents for the year through September decreased from 2,117 in 2010 to 1,709 this year, it appears the county has not been immune to the booster rings’ work. (Source gazette.net)