For those of us who work in retail and loss prevention, we unfortunately have to deal with shoplifters in our stores on a regular basis.  When you stop shoplifting suspects, sometimes it’s easy to let your nerves and adrenaline get the best of you in these situations.  You don’t want to let the shoplifter know that you are nervous, so the best thing to do is be calm and keep your mind on what you are trying to accomplish.  You also want to be able to make sure they don’t become agitated, so it’s important to keep the line of communication open throughout the process and give the shoplifters straight forward direction.

I remember a time that I was standing in one of the music CD aisles, watching someone at a distance in the electronics department.  The next thing I know, a guy walks right next to me and picked up several of the exact same CD and placed it into a shopping cart.  This was earlier in my career, so needless to say, my adrenaline was through the roof at that point.  Many things were going through my head at the moment and I was thinking how lucky I was to have seen that happen right in front of me.  I also knew that I now had to be extra careful because the shoplifter has now seen me, so I can’t let him see me again or he will become suspicious. The CDs at the time had large plastic anti-shoplifting devices on them, and I also noticed that he had a backpack in his shopping cart.  

I stayed calm, took a breath and walked away to watch him from a distance.  He continued picking up CDs and placed them into the shopping cart.  Then he went into a different department where he started looking around and popped the anti-shoplifting cases off the CDs with a screwdriver.  Naturally, his next move was to put the CDs into his backpack.  After concealing them into the backpack, he headed out to the garden area and exited the store with the stolen merchandise.  When I approached him and identified myself, he recognized me from being there when he first picked up the merchandise, which he actually laughed about when we got back to the office.  

During apprehensions when you stop shoplifting suspects, you have to remain cool and collected.   Another time composure and communication helped me was when I caught a guy pushing out a cart full of beer.  The cart of beer wasn’t the surprising part, it was what happened during the actual apprehension of the subject.  I watched the guy load up a cart with cases of beer and starting pushing it toward the front of the store.  Once he got near the registers, he took off running with the cart out the exit door.  I was not expecting this, and wasn’t close enough to him when he exited to stop him.  I knew it was against policy to chase him through the parking lot, so I decided to stay on the sidewalk and call out to him.  By this time, he was almost to his getaway vehicle, so I could not believe my eyes when he turned around with the cart and came back to talk to me.  I couldn’t believe that it actually worked, but it did, and I got all of the beer back to the shelves where it belonged.  

For more information contact us: (stop shoplifting) or call 1.770.426.0547

It was one of those hot, miserable New Orleans days. Middle of August and the humidity was probably around 300%. One of those times I enjoyed working inside along with the central air. I was working a joint investigation with local police and a few retailers. This task force was assembled with one goal in mind, prevent shoplifting in our parish. With the help of some area stores and a strong partnership with the police, we had set up shop at a local pharmacy since they were constantly targeted for household items, such as detergent and soap. We were in place and we just waited. 3 hours in and sweat dripping down our faces, a familiar face walked through the front doors. We knew this guy. He was a booster with a criminal record a mile long. Sure enough, he walked right over to the laundry detergent. 

Believe it or not, laundry detergent is one of the highest theft items right now. Boosters can easily walk out the doors with this product and turn it incredibly quick at flea markets, or less than honest brick and mortar stores. In this store, their LP team had secured most of their detergent with an alpha 3 alarm hard tag. For most, it’s a great physical deterrent. It will trigger the EAS upon exit, alarm if the cable is cut, and my favorite part, alarm for about 10 minutes after going through the towers. Getting back to our booster… he walks over with a buggy, loads 5 up and simply walks out. The EAS tower alarms and the 3 alarm tags start wailing. Doesn’t faze this guy one bit. He casually walks over to his vehicle, loads them in the trunk and drives off. The purpose of our operation was to find out where the product was going, so we let him leave and we, along with police, followed behind. 

About two blocks down the road, he pulls into a neighborhood grocery store. Cameras were rolling as he very casually unloaded the detergent and brought it inside. After a few minutes, our friend emerged and detectives affected an arrest. He immediately denied any wrong doing, not knowing we have watched, filmed and followed his every move. We went inside the store to receive our stolen goods, but the shop owner claimed to have no idea what we were talking about. The detective asked a few of us to come inside to see if we could identify any of our store’s product that may be on display. After a few laps around the small store, I didn’t see anything that could belong to me, so I began walking towards the front when a faint, chirping sound caught my attention. I called the detectives over, to what appeared to be a supply closet. I knew this sound. It was the alpha 3 alarm tag still chirping from when it had been trigged at the EAS tower. 

Long story short, the owner, trying to weasel out of trouble agreed to open the door and cooperate. Inside was roughly 3 dozen bottles of detergent, most still with the retail anti-theft device still attached. And there, in the corner, still chirping away were the 5 that our booster had stolen from us. You couldn’t ask for better evidence than that!. 

For every apparel retailer there comes a steady stream of people who just don’t want to purchase your product. From my experience, it seems like more shoplifters target apparel merchandise than any other section of the store. Maybe because there are a plethora of high dollar, easily concealable items, or that you can get more articles of clothing in a bag, or maybe it’s because most stores are not utilizing security tags on clothes. Whatever the case, apparel theft is huge, and if your store has a fitting room, this could be a part of the problem. 

I was training some new in store LP agents recently, when we began to observe a female in our apparel department. We watched as she began selecting random articles of high end clothing, without regard for size. One thing we noticed is that she was particularly attentive to whether or not clothing security devices were used on the pieces she was selecting. Exhibiting all the classic signs of a shoplifter, we began observation. It wasn’t long before she took a pile of clothes into the fitting room. About 25 minutes later, she emerged with what seemed like a smaller pile of clothes. I couldn’t be 100% certain if a theft had taken place, so I just had to watch as she left the store with, what I’m assuming, was a few hundred dollars’ worth of my merchandise. What happened?

The company I work for doesn’t have a fitting room policy. Meaning, there is no employee working this area, and customer can come and go if they choose. This is great for customer service, but it also leaves the store open for theft in a big way. Since there is no control of merchandise going in to the room, it’s almost impossible to make a shoplifting apprehension from the fitting room. Without an accurate number of what went in the stall, there’s no way to tell if the same amount of merchandise had come out. We would routinely find defeated checkpoint tags in the stalls at night. We needed a solution. 

After several lengthy meetings with our operations group, we decided to test a fitting room policy at a few of our higher shrink stores. The area was staffed with an employee during business hours and now we would limit the amount of items a customer could take into room. In addition, the employee would give the customer a number that matched the number of garments and the clothing would be verified by that employee upon the customer’s exit. The return on investment was almost immediate. The first thing we noticed was a reduction in the number of checkpoint tags we would find in the stalls. We also saw a reduction in shrink in the apparel department overall. The biggest challenge we thought we’d face was opposition from our customers, however, what we learned is that most every big box retailer has a similar process. I think no matter the size of your store, if you have a fitting room, you need to implement a control. If not, you will continually open yourself for unnecessary losses caused by shoplifting. 

For more information, contact us: Clothing Security, or call 1.770.426.0547