Oh, I can tell you one major retailer out there rarely detains anyone. They will have their in-store LP follow shoplifters home and get their address (even multiple times to be sure) rather than confronting them in the store. Add it to the file. Also heavily use facial recognition software when the customer comes back. They will very much target (no pun intended) and focus on the frequent shoplifers and have the software to do it. How many times you let them get away with it depends what they are taking. If they are taking $500 electronics items out the door it doesn't take many times for you to be able to press charges. If they are taking $40 worth of body wash it is going to take a while.klkla wrote: ↑October 24th, 2020, 2:30 pm How many times do you allow them to get away with stealing before you finally confront them? You're never going to know who they actually are until they're detained. Personally I think it is better to have a trained LP agent confront them first and let them know they're on the radar. Facial recognition can still work to alert LP if the same customer returns to any of the company's stores. FWIW the supervising LP agents can do this from corporate office and do not need to drive out to every store like in the old days.
Facial recognition is going to be important with another more common type of theft situation: Self checkout.
A lot of people use the self-checkout because they know they can slip a few free items in pretty easily. Or they will buy the higher priced organic item and ring it up at the lower non-organic price or just some other random item. Once it's been determined that they are doing this you can program the system to require a manual override each time they use the self checkouts allowing an employee to audit their order and make sure it is rung up properly. Those people that are inclined to steal using this method will get frustrated and take their 'business' to another store.
I have observed where someone steals and gets away with it, and is then confronted when they return to the store advising them to not do it again. Where this can become a problem is if you falsely accuse someone of a past incident. I would say if doing this, you better have tape of them previously stealing on file and with 100% certainty know it is them in case they try to file some kind of lawsuit.
A number of months ago I was in a grocery store in my area. Some guy walked in and told the head clerk he wanted to "settle his debt." The head clerk said "what? didn't we tell you not to come in here anymore?" The guy said "yeah but I came in here yesterday and nobody said anything to me and I took two candy bars and left but I am here to pay you for them now." The guy put a couple crumpled up dollar bills on a closed checkstand then asked to use the restroom. The head clerk refused it, told the guy not to leave the money, and told him to come back and talk to the store director in the morning. This is an example of the type of shoplifting you don't waste the police's time with. This is a store chain that, previously, in other locations, all of which have since either closed or been sold, I have observed multiple "chase and catch" incidents the vast majority of which involved liquor.
Regarding self checkout, this is already happening. Wal Mart and Kroger have put small monitor screens at eye level showing you that they are recording your face and the self checkout the whole time. Wal Mart will use those recordings, randomly audit transactions, or audit transactions somehow flagged by the store, then use the video of your vehicle license plate and has some law firm that tie everything together and will send you a notice for payment or threaten to press charges on you. There is one chain in the midwest, Giant Eagle, where you cannot use self checkout without a loyalty card. Being new to Giant Eagle and only in its territory for a couple days, I was using an "unenrolled" loyalty card I got on my first stop into one. Every time, that needed override before I could even use the self checkout.
Lots of interesting stuff to talk about.
But we veer this back to Walgreens. Why can't they handle the theft issues? There are so many different solutions.
Their solution of a bunch of locking shelves doesn't seem to work. Not only does it seem to not stop the theft, but it has a serious negative impact on the paying customers as well due to the difficulty to get product. Putting merchandise behind the counter doesn't work either- this week someone went into one of the San Francisco Stores while a TV reporter was there taping a news story, jumped over the checkout counter, and stole an air bed that was being kept (evidently unlocked) behind the checkout counter.