Toothpaste and Tide under lock and key? Stores say it's necessary to combat shoplifting surge
These locked shelves at a Walgreens in Queens have a customer service button to summon a store employee. Credit: UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images/UCG
Shoplifters used to just swipe a few things that they actually needed, a local grocer said.
Now, they’re loading their shopping carts full of toothpaste, shampoo and other health and beauty products before scurrying out of the store, said David Mandell, a third-generation grocer who owns eight supermarkets, including four Holiday Farms stores on Long Island.
“This is different. This is people stealing stuff that they’re reselling somewhere else. It’s different, a different level,” he said.
The thefts at his Franklin Square store, which opened in a former King Kullen supermarket space in September, had gotten so severe that Mandell moved the health and beauty items from an aisle to the front wall near the cashiers last week to deter shoplifters, he said.
Mandell hasn’t locked up any goods in product cases because it’s an “inconvenience to the customers,” but other retailers are as their shoplifting losses surge. A quick trip into drugstores and big-box stores will reveal the most basic items and necessities being locked up — everything from toothpaste, teeth whitening strips and facial creams at Walmart, to body wash and aspirin at CVS, to vitamins, antacids and eye drops at Rite Aid.
Locking up items reduces some sales from legitimate customers who aren't willing to walk around stores searching for employees to unlock merchandise, retail experts said.
"Locking up products is usually a last resort for retailers because if they cannot service the customer in a prompt manner, customers will leave and buy product elsewhere," said Mark R. Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International Inc., a loss prevention consulting firm in Wesley Chapel, Florida.
Retail shrink, which is inventory loss from theft, damage or other causes, accounted for $94.5 billion in losses in 2021, according to retail security survey results the National Retail Federation and the Loss Prevention Research Council released in September 2022.
A surge in shoplifting incidents is being driven by several factors, including high inflation, insufficient store staffing, more use of self-checkout lanes, and the low risk levels for incarceration or other punishment for thieves in some states, said Craig Szklany, vice president and product general manager in loss prevention and liability at Sensormatic Solutions, which makes loss prevention technology for retailers.
Also, organized retail crime rings selling stolen goods online is a growing issue, retail experts said.
So, more retailers are "getting back to basics,” such as using electronic surveillance tags, he said.
“It adds risk to the event," Szklany said.
They’re also adding more advanced technology, such as “shelf sweep,” which alerts retailers when more than the usual number of an item is being picked up at one time, and audio alerts that announce that customers in particular aisles need employee assistance, "which induces shoplifters to put the item back on the shelf," he said.
Of the shoplifting incidents reported in 2019 to the Suffolk County Police Department, 289 were for grand larcenies (valued at more than $1,000) and 5,258 were for petit larcenies (valued at less than $1,000), according to the agency's records. Those numbers fell 15.6% to 244 and 10.8% to 4,689, respectively, in 2020, due in large part to many stores being closed for several months that year because of government-mandated shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But for the first six months of 2022, there were 329 shoplifting grand larcenies in the county, a 93.5% increase from the 170 in the same period in 2021 and 143.7% more than the 135 in the first six months of 2019, according to county police department records.
Reports of shoplifting petit larcenies from January to June 2022 totaled 2,560, a 15.7% increase from the 2,212 incidents over the six-month period in 2021 and a 4.9% increase from the 2,440 in the first six months in 2019, according to Suffolk County Police Department data.
The Nassau County Police Department changed the way it counted shoplifting reports in 2020, the agency said -- so Newsday could not compare the data.
A rising number of store thefts are connected to organized retail crime rings taking items that are easy to transport or that demand high values when being “fenced,” said Mark Mathews, vice president of research at the National Retail Federation.
A survey last summer of 63 retailers, with a median annual sales volume of $2.5 billion, found that 44.5% were increasing their annual spending on loss prevention with new technology, security guards and/or other means, according to the retail security report from the National Retail Federation and the Loss Prevention Research Council. Nearly 13% of respondents planned to increase their spending between 10% and 24.9%.
While the use of anti-theft measures, such as locked product cases, surveillance cameras and spider wraps — wired alarms attached to products to prevent theft — has increased, the number of store employees has declined, which is a factor in increasing theft, Mathews said.
Also, retailers prohibit employees from putting themselves in harm’s way trying to detain shoplifters, who could be armed, he said.
“They’re trained to look after customers, not to approach criminals,” Mathews said.
Supermarkets affiliated with the Aurora Grocery Group, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based network of 24 grocery stores, including seven on Long Island, are seeing more thefts of laundry detergent, frozen seafood and health and beauty products that are being sold by shoplifters, said Jenny Jorge, general secretary of the company’s board of directors.
Even Häagen-Dazs ice cream is being swiped because it’s expensive, said Jorge, president of Gala Foods Supermarket in Freeport and GalaFresh Farms in Baldwin.
“We have had to hire extra security in our supermarkets. But not only are we seeing more shoplifting, we’re seeing more aggressive shoplifting,” said Jorge, who said she estimates that her two stores’ losses due to theft have risen from about 1% of sales to between 2.5% and 3% of sales.
The stores are considering adding locked cases for merchandise, she said.
The best deterrent to shoplifting, however, is good customer service, said Doyle, the loss prevention consultant.
“Most thieves want/need privacy to commit their thefts, so we can take that away from them with good customer service. Unfortunately, stores have cut back their sales floor staffs (to save payroll) so customer service is not their answer right now,” he said in an email.
Instead, more retailers are choosing to lock up merchandise, display less inventory on sales floors, put goods behind counters so customers have to ask employees for them, or not carry the products at all, he said.
Most retailers that Newsday contacted declined to speak about shoplifting at their stores, but they provided general statements about their anti-theft measures.
“Like other retailers, organized retail crime is a concern across our business,” Target said in a statement last week.
“We’re taking proactive measures to keep our teams and guests safe while deterring and preventing theft. These mitigation efforts include hiring additional security guards, adding third-party guard services at select locations, and on a limited basis using theft-deterrent strategies for categories that are prone to theft,” the Minneapolis-based retailer said.
But retail shrink reduced Target's profit margin by $400 million in the first three quarters of 2022 compared with the same period in 2021, and most of the decline was due to organized retail crime, the retailer’s chief financial officer, Michael Fiddelke, said on a quarterly earnings call with analysts in November.
Walmart determines which items are locked up based on market-specific data, which can vary from store to store, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said in a statement last week.
Last spring, the retailer had men's underwear locked in clear, plastic cases in its Farmingdale store. Now the cases are gone but hanging from the ceilings in the men's underwear and sock aisles are blinking signs that say "security cameras in use."
Walmart declined to say why the change occurred.
“We’re focused on meeting our customers’ needs while providing the best shopping experience at each store and we’ll continue exploring additional ways to protect merchandise, keep prices low and in stock for the millions of customers we serve each week,” the retailer said.
However, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told CNBC in December that shoplifting is “higher than what it has historically been,” and that if the problem continued, it would lead to higher product prices and store closings.
The pandemic spurred more of two kinds of shoplifting: theft by organized retail crime rings and panic shoplifting by people out of work who wouldn’t normally shoplift, said Barbara Staib, spokeswoman for the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention in Huntington.
The association provides anti-shoplifting education to offenders as a condition of sentencing, probation or diversion from the criminal justice system.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, mask mandates provided anonymity for thieves, making it harder to identify them in video surveillance footage, retailers said.
New York State’s ban on retailers’ use of single-use plastic shopping bags is another factor, local retailers said. The ban, which the state began enforcing in October 2020, has led to more shoplifting by thieves placing merchandise in their reusable, opaque bags and bypassing the checkout lanes, they said.
“And we’ve had this ongoing issue with police priorities and police resources,” Staib said.
New York State’s bail reform, which is a contentious issue, is also a factor, according to some.
“In some cases, it contributes to people’s brazen disregard for the law,” Staib said.
Bail reform in New York State took effect in January 2020, ending cash bail in most cases that involved misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.
“The law aimed to reduce the risk that someone would be jailed because they could not afford to pay for release and reduce the unnecessary use of incarceration, which can have a profoundly disruptive effect on people’s lives,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School, which says that data does not show a correlation between recent crime spikes and bail reform.
A revision to the bail reform law took effect in July 2020 that allowed more crimes to be eligible for cash bail. Also, judges were allowed to consider defendants' legal histories in setting cash bail.
Organized retail crime is responsible for most of the shoplifting in New York State, said Melissa O’Connor, president and chief executive officer of the Retail Council of New York State, an Albany-based trade group that represents 5,000 stores.
The retail council supported more recent changes to the state law — to allow repeat offenders of some crimes, including theft of property, to be eligible for arrest and bail — under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s fiscal 2023 budget.
The council is hopeful that the state law changes, along with President Joe Biden’s December signing of the INFORM Consumers Act, which requires online marketplaces to verify the identities of high-volume third-party sellers, will be an effective means of reducing shoplifting incidents, O’Connor said.
Shoplifters used to just swipe a few things that they actually needed, a local grocer said.
Now, they’re loading their shopping carts full of toothpaste, shampoo and other health and beauty products before scurrying out of the store, said David Mandell, a third-generation grocer who owns eight supermarkets, including four Holiday Farms stores on Long Island.
“This is different. This is people stealing stuff that they’re reselling somewhere else. It’s different, a different level,” he said.
The thefts at his Franklin Square store, which opened in a former King Kullen supermarket space in September, had gotten so severe that Mandell moved the health and beauty items from an aisle to the front wall near the cashiers last week to deter shoplifters, he said.
WHAT TO KNOW
- Long Island retailers are seeing a surge in "aggressive" shoplifting.
- Organized retail crime rings that sell stolen merchandise online are responsible for much of the theft, experts say.
- Locking up merchandise and adding security cameras are among the measures retailers are taking to combat the rise in shoplifting.
Store supervisor John Gonzalez at Holiday Farms Supermarket in Franklin Square. An increase in shoplifting has spurred the store to move personal hygiene products to the front wall, near the checkout lanes, to deter theft. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin
Mandell hasn’t locked up any goods in product cases because it’s an “inconvenience to the customers,” but other retailers are as their shoplifting losses surge. A quick trip into drugstores and big-box stores will reveal the most basic items and necessities being locked up — everything from toothpaste, teeth whitening strips and facial creams at Walmart, to body wash and aspirin at CVS, to vitamins, antacids and eye drops at Rite Aid.
Locking up items reduces some sales from legitimate customers who aren't willing to walk around stores searching for employees to unlock merchandise, retail experts said.
"Locking up products is usually a last resort for retailers because if they cannot service the customer in a prompt manner, customers will leave and buy product elsewhere," said Mark R. Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International Inc., a loss prevention consulting firm in Wesley Chapel, Florida.
Inventory loss from theft, damage or other causes accounted for $94.5 billion in losses in 2021. -National Retail Federation
Retail shrink, which is inventory loss from theft, damage or other causes, accounted for $94.5 billion in losses in 2021, according to retail security survey results the National Retail Federation and the Loss Prevention Research Council released in September 2022.
A surge in shoplifting incidents is being driven by several factors, including high inflation, insufficient store staffing, more use of self-checkout lanes, and the low risk levels for incarceration or other punishment for thieves in some states, said Craig Szklany, vice president and product general manager in loss prevention and liability at Sensormatic Solutions, which makes loss prevention technology for retailers.
Also, organized retail crime rings selling stolen goods online is a growing issue, retail experts said.
So, more retailers are "getting back to basics,” such as using electronic surveillance tags, he said.
“It adds risk to the event," Szklany said.
They’re also adding more advanced technology, such as “shelf sweep,” which alerts retailers when more than the usual number of an item is being picked up at one time, and audio alerts that announce that customers in particular aisles need employee assistance, "which induces shoplifters to put the item back on the shelf," he said.
Local theft numbers surge
Of the shoplifting incidents reported in 2019 to the Suffolk County Police Department, 289 were for grand larcenies (valued at more than $1,000) and 5,258 were for petit larcenies (valued at less than $1,000), according to the agency's records. Those numbers fell 15.6% to 244 and 10.8% to 4,689, respectively, in 2020, due in large part to many stores being closed for several months that year because of government-mandated shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But for the first six months of 2022, there were 329 shoplifting grand larcenies in the county, a 93.5% increase from the 170 in the same period in 2021 and 143.7% more than the 135 in the first six months of 2019, according to county police department records.
Reports of shoplifting petit larcenies from January to June 2022 totaled 2,560, a 15.7% increase from the 2,212 incidents over the six-month period in 2021 and a 4.9% increase from the 2,440 in the first six months in 2019, according to Suffolk County Police Department data.
The Nassau County Police Department changed the way it counted shoplifting reports in 2020, the agency said -- so Newsday could not compare the data.
A rising number of store thefts are connected to organized retail crime rings taking items that are easy to transport or that demand high values when being “fenced,” said Mark Mathews, vice president of research at the National Retail Federation.
A survey last summer of 63 retailers, with a median annual sales volume of $2.5 billion, found that 44.5% were increasing their annual spending on loss prevention with new technology, security guards and/or other means, according to the retail security report from the National Retail Federation and the Loss Prevention Research Council. Nearly 13% of respondents planned to increase their spending between 10% and 24.9%.
While the use of anti-theft measures, such as locked product cases, surveillance cameras and spider wraps — wired alarms attached to products to prevent theft — has increased, the number of store employees has declined, which is a factor in increasing theft, Mathews said.
Also, retailers prohibit employees from putting themselves in harm’s way trying to detain shoplifters, who could be armed, he said.
“They’re trained to look after customers, not to approach criminals,” Mathews said.
Supermarkets affiliated with the Aurora Grocery Group, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based network of 24 grocery stores, including seven on Long Island, are seeing more thefts of laundry detergent, frozen seafood and health and beauty products that are being sold by shoplifters, said Jenny Jorge, general secretary of the company’s board of directors.
Tide laundry detergent is the number one item stolen from supermarkets, says store manager Marty Lundin of Holiday Farms Supermarket in Franklin Square. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin
Even Häagen-Dazs ice cream is being swiped because it’s expensive, said Jorge, president of Gala Foods Supermarket in Freeport and GalaFresh Farms in Baldwin.
“We have had to hire extra security in our supermarkets. But not only are we seeing more shoplifting, we’re seeing more aggressive shoplifting,” said Jorge, who said she estimates that her two stores’ losses due to theft have risen from about 1% of sales to between 2.5% and 3% of sales.
The stores are considering adding locked cases for merchandise, she said.
The best deterrent to shoplifting, however, is good customer service, said Doyle, the loss prevention consultant.
“Most thieves want/need privacy to commit their thefts, so we can take that away from them with good customer service. Unfortunately, stores have cut back their sales floor staffs (to save payroll) so customer service is not their answer right now,” he said in an email.
Instead, more retailers are choosing to lock up merchandise, display less inventory on sales floors, put goods behind counters so customers have to ask employees for them, or not carry the products at all, he said.
A Target employee locks personal hygiene items in new security shelving at a store in Queens. Credit: UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Most retailers that Newsday contacted declined to speak about shoplifting at their stores, but they provided general statements about their anti-theft measures.
“Like other retailers, organized retail crime is a concern across our business,” Target said in a statement last week.
“We’re taking proactive measures to keep our teams and guests safe while deterring and preventing theft. These mitigation efforts include hiring additional security guards, adding third-party guard services at select locations, and on a limited basis using theft-deterrent strategies for categories that are prone to theft,” the Minneapolis-based retailer said.
But retail shrink reduced Target's profit margin by $400 million in the first three quarters of 2022 compared with the same period in 2021, and most of the decline was due to organized retail crime, the retailer’s chief financial officer, Michael Fiddelke, said on a quarterly earnings call with analysts in November.
Walmart determines which items are locked up based on market-specific data, which can vary from store to store, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said in a statement last week.
Last spring, the retailer had men's underwear locked in clear, plastic cases in its Farmingdale store. Now the cases are gone but hanging from the ceilings in the men's underwear and sock aisles are blinking signs that say "security cameras in use."
Walmart declined to say why the change occurred.
“We’re focused on meeting our customers’ needs while providing the best shopping experience at each store and we’ll continue exploring additional ways to protect merchandise, keep prices low and in stock for the millions of customers we serve each week,” the retailer said.
However, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told CNBC in December that shoplifting is “higher than what it has historically been,” and that if the problem continued, it would lead to higher product prices and store closings.
'Ongoing issue with police priorities'
The pandemic spurred more of two kinds of shoplifting: theft by organized retail crime rings and panic shoplifting by people out of work who wouldn’t normally shoplift, said Barbara Staib, spokeswoman for the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention in Huntington.
The association provides anti-shoplifting education to offenders as a condition of sentencing, probation or diversion from the criminal justice system.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, mask mandates provided anonymity for thieves, making it harder to identify them in video surveillance footage, retailers said.
New York State’s ban on retailers’ use of single-use plastic shopping bags is another factor, local retailers said. The ban, which the state began enforcing in October 2020, has led to more shoplifting by thieves placing merchandise in their reusable, opaque bags and bypassing the checkout lanes, they said.
“And we’ve had this ongoing issue with police priorities and police resources,” Staib said.
New York State’s bail reform, which is a contentious issue, is also a factor, according to some.
“In some cases, it contributes to people’s brazen disregard for the law,” Staib said.
Bail reform in New York State took effect in January 2020, ending cash bail in most cases that involved misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.
“The law aimed to reduce the risk that someone would be jailed because they could not afford to pay for release and reduce the unnecessary use of incarceration, which can have a profoundly disruptive effect on people’s lives,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School, which says that data does not show a correlation between recent crime spikes and bail reform.
A revision to the bail reform law took effect in July 2020 that allowed more crimes to be eligible for cash bail. Also, judges were allowed to consider defendants' legal histories in setting cash bail.
Organized retail crime is responsible for most of the shoplifting in New York State, said Melissa O’Connor, president and chief executive officer of the Retail Council of New York State, an Albany-based trade group that represents 5,000 stores.
The retail council supported more recent changes to the state law — to allow repeat offenders of some crimes, including theft of property, to be eligible for arrest and bail — under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s fiscal 2023 budget.
The council is hopeful that the state law changes, along with President Joe Biden’s December signing of the INFORM Consumers Act, which requires online marketplaces to verify the identities of high-volume third-party sellers, will be an effective means of reducing shoplifting incidents, O’Connor said.
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.
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