The Colorado Organized Retail Crime Alliance (COORCA) is an organization that was established in January 2012, and was originally designed to help retail and law enforcement investigators share intelligence information regarding retail crimes in Colorado.

Prior to 2012 in the Denver area there were several small groups made up of local Police Detectives and Retail Store Investigators that would meet and share information related to retail crimes that occurred in their respective jurisdictions. The idea of building COORCA developed when a number of these Detectives and Retail Loss Prevention Investigators and Managers came together to find a way to improve what they were doing by combining the membership of their respective groups to create one central organization that could serve all of the different jurisdictions in the area. Initially, the organization's primary focus was to just organize regular meetings for the membership to help them share information on the cases that they were working, and to provide a way for investigators to network with their colleagues in both retail and law enforcement to help them identify common suspects and criminal activity. In addition, a secure website was created to allow any of the members to post bulletins on criminal cases and identify and collaborate with other investigators that were working the same groups or individual suspects.

The first COORCA meeting in March 2012 was attended by nearly 100 different members of the law enforcement and retail investigations community. Since that time, the organization has grown to a membership of 1,125, including a mix of patrol officers, detectives, Federal law enforcement agents, retail investigators, loss prevention managers, and prosecutors. COORCA now has three different regional chapters serving the Denver Metropolitan area, the Northern Colorado region (based in Greeley, CO), and the Southern Colorado region (based in Colorado Springs). Each of these chapters host their own monthly meetings that focus primarily on the cases and criminal activity specific to their area, but all of the chapters share their bulletins on the one common website.

In 2013 an informal Board of Directors was initially created with the purpose of helping to maintain COORCA, its website, and the monthly meetings, and also to help identify their goals for the future. In 2015, a formal board of directors was appointed, bylaws were adopted, and committees were created to help build on the success of the organization and to achieve some of the goals that had been identified for the future of COORCA. Training events have been hosted by COORCA to provide members with case study presentations, and guest speakers have been invited to speak on relevant topics in the industry. In addition, COORCA became a non-profit organization that can now collect donations that will help fund the website, as well as future training costs and resources for the membership to take advantage of.

The information shared by COORCA members has been credited with helping to identify a large number of suspects, and solve larger cases that may not have been successful without the collaboration of the investigators that post and view the bulletins that are sent out.

For more information regarding COORCA, please visit the website www.coorca.org, or email Westminster Police Detective Russ Johnson (Chairman) at russ.johnson@coorca.org, or Walmart Global Investigator Brandon Hunter (Vice Chairman) at brandon.hunter@coorca.org.

 

Colorado Organized Retail Crime Alliance Board Members
 

We have 28 members of our Board: Sixteen (16) are Executive Board members with voting power and leadership in chapters or committees. The remaining 12 Board members serve on the four committees, and work with the directors to take on tasks to further the goals and objectives of those committees. The size of the board is designed to help ensure that no one person is overwhelmed with responsibilities, and there is an ability to backfill vacancies in the leadership as they occur with experienced board members. The Board is made up as follows: