Police On The Prowl

SHOPLIFTING SEASON HITS AREA RETAILERS

Trent Morrison doesn’t work Mondays as police chief in Gravette, but he’s still on the prowl for bad guys. Specifically, he’s trying to prevent the five-fingered discount.

Morrison and his fellow loss prevention officers at Dillard’s in Fayetteville recovered more than $3,000 worth of property and turned over 13 suspected shoplifters to police in November, he said.

“Just in the last two months, there’s been quite a jump,” Morrison said. “During the summer, we saw more like $200 or $300 recovered each month.”

Shoplifting calls in Springdale jumped 29 percent over the past two years, said Sgt. Shane Pegram, public information officer for the police department. That’s comparing all of 2007 and 2008 to 11 months this year.

“I expect our year-end number will be a bit higher than the 257 we’re showing now,” Pegram said. “It seems the economy might play a part in the increase, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”

Fayetteville shoplifting arrests are up over last year, at 372 so far in 2009.

“It seems to go in cycles, and the swings don’t really match economics,” said Cpl. Rick Crisman. “It’s really hard to predict, but we know it always jumps before the holidays.”

Weather may also play a factor, said Clint Gober, a manager at Mountain Man Supply and Pawn in Fayetteville.

“Big, bulky coats aren’t just warm, they’re a popular place to try to conceal things,” Gober said. “We caught a guy last week with a set of freon gauges hidden inside his jacket.”

The 2008 National Retail Security Survey showed retail shrinkage, or theft, averaged 1.51 percent of retail sales in 2008. That means theft cost retailers about $36.6 billion, up slightly from 2007.

Shoplifting accounts for about a third of retail shrink. The number of shoplifting cases was down nationwide in 2008, but the value of merchandise taken increased, the survey said.

“Sadly, it’s something you’ve got to build into the price of everything else, but for us, it doesn’t amount to a whole lot,” Gober said. “Prevention is really common sense, like not putting expensive or portable items in remote areas of the store.”

Most shoplifters cooperate when approached by security officers, although some fight or run, Morrison said. He had to hold down one suspect several years ago, and when police arrived, the man was found to have assault warrants.

“You just never know who’s going to do what,” he said. “Most of them claim they’re innocent, then ask if they can just pay for the stuff and let it go.”

Others resist for a variety of reasons. When loss prevention officers at a Fayetteville Walmart detained parolee David McElyea, he pulled out a knife and slashed his own neck in the loss prevention office rather than be arrested. He died a short time later.

Companies spent a total of $8.2 billion on loss prevention in 2008, said Joe Larocca, senior asset protection advisor for the National Retail Federation.

However, loss prevention budgets among retail companies decreased to 0.34 percent of annual sales in 2008, down from loss prevention budgets that averaged 0.47 percent of retail sales in 2007.

“The decline represents a vicious circle during which decreasing shrink rates lead to decreased loss prevention budgets, which then result in an increase in shrink,” according to Len Lewis of the Web site stores.org.

It’s not just the customers that bear watching, Morrison said. Sometimes, it’s those behind the register or in the stockroom who get sticky fingers.

“Probably 80 percent of my calls are about customer shoplifters, not employees, but we lose a lot more value-wise to employee theft than to traditional shoplifters,” Morrison said.

A shoplifting employee takes about $2,672 in merchandise on average, and they can continue stealing for nearly a year before being discovered, according to the retail security survey.

Shoplifting is a misdemeanor, but those who don’t cooperate can face felony robbery or aggravated robbery charges, said John Threet, Washington County prosecutor.

“It turns into robbery when you’re committing a theft and use or threaten to use physical force,” Threet said. “It changes from a property crime to crime against a person. We refer to it as shoplifting gone bad.”

Aggravated robbery charges involve combining the physical threat and being armed or claiming to be armed with a deadly weapon, he said.

Lana Flowers contributed to this report.

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