Retail thefts lead to new law enforcement tactics

(COLORADO SPRINGS) — In the ongoing battle against organized retail crime, the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) is tackling the problem head-on with its latest task force. CSPD’s Organized Retail Crime Unit has had a successful first year, but officers say more work must be done.

We have all likely seen stores like The Home Depot, Walmart, and Target limiting self-checkout and locking up more merchandise, this is how big box stores are fighting back against retail theft. According to the National Retail Federation, this type of theft on average costs retailers $100 billion a year. Retail theft is a growing national problem and it’s happening right here in our community.

The reason for forming the CSPD Organized Retail Crime Unit came from local retailers themselves, who were experiencing substantial losses because of theft.

“In our community, we’ve had so much retail crime as well as metal thefts where you’re getting catalytic converters stolen, and it has morphed into retail, metal, and pawn because a lot of times when people are stealing retail items, they’re pawning those items at the pawn stores,” said Sergeant Gary Tedeschi with CSPD.

The police department’s Organized Retail Crime Unit has uncovered extensive criminal operations including a case involving Top Dollar Pawn shops.

“The Top Dollar Pawn case expanded on all of that coming to light where they were stealing all these items from Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s all of your big box stores, and then they were bringing it to the pawn stores to sell it,” Sgt. Tedeschi explained.

In 2023, the task force arrested 20 local repeat offenders. Sgt. Tedeschi said they will often work as teams and have regular locations they’ll steal from.

“They use a fencing location,” Sgt. Tedeschi explained. “When they steal an item, they’ll take that item to a fence, that’s what we call it, but it’s usually a second-hand store or another business.”

One arrested after search at Citadel Mall store

In March of this year, officers responded to a fencing operation involving the Legends and Heroes store at the Citadel and Chapel Hills Malls. According to CSPD, that investigation goes back to 2022 after police got a tip about the Citadel business allegedly taking in stolen property and then reselling it. It was during the investigation police found the link to the other store at the Chapel Hills Mall.

“Back in 2020, just five of the local retail stores were reporting $40 million in shrink or loss to those stores,” Sgt. Tedeschi said. “When you’re looking at $40 million back then compared to now, it’s up to about $100 million, and that’s just here in our city alone.”

The Home Depot continues to be impacted and has hired its own retail crime investigative team to fight back.

“We’ve made investments across the board, so not just in people, but in technologies, processes, the way that we do things inside of a store to harden the environment, make it more difficult for these bad actors to impact these stores, but ultimately to keep our customers and associates safe is the driving force behind why we do what we do,” Sean Browne, The Home Depot Senior Manager of Organized Retail Crime said.

Browne told FOX21 Home Depot reports the majority of its losses around power tools.

“This is a growing issue that we need to take seriously,” Browne explained. “We see these losses happen across the board. These are professionals and this is a theft for greed, not a theft for need.”

Home Depot reports the majority of its losses around power tools. Next time you visit a Home Depot you may notice some changes.

“You’ll see things like product locked up, something we wouldn’t have imagined doing years back,” Browne said. “You’ll see things like locking carts, and parking lot towers with certain technologies integrated into them to help keep our environment safe. We’ve even gone to egress gates. We refer to them as an extra line of defense to our open exits and entrances to prevent this loss of product.”

Browne said the biggest asset the store has implemented is the people.

“So whether that’s internal at the Home Depot or some of the relationships that we’ve made externally with law enforcement,” Browne explained. “Law enforcement recognized the size and scope of this issue, and they’ve taken it seriously. Colorado Springs is a great example of that. That task force has supported us in many ways. We hope that we’ve supported them as well and provided the intelligence that they need to execute on these tough tasks in front of them.”

“These stores are experiencing losses that they’ve never seen before,” Sgt. Tedeschi said.

Sgt. Tedeschi tells FOX21, that organized crime itself is the basic idea of shoplifting to get money, but in this case, it’s not to cover living expenses.

“The majority and I would say 90 to 95% of the prolific offenders we’ve arrested are stealing to support their drug habit. Usually, that is fentanyl,” Sgt. Tedeschi said.

Officers have spoken with fentanyl users suspected of shoplifting who tell them they can’t get off the drug.

“It’s some of the more honest people I think we’ve dealt with in the fact that they’re telling you ‘I’m hooked, and I can’t get off of it, but I know that I can go and steal $150 in Legos to pay for my drugs today,’ we’ve seen lists where it says, wake up, get high, steal, sell to this location, get high again,” Sgt. Tedeschi said.

CSPD reports organized retail crime is not just impacting stores, but also the consumer.

“Any time you have a loss within a retail store, I think a lot of people believe that retail stores can handle that loss or that they’re insured for that loss,” Sgt. Tedeschi explained. “The reality is, they’re not, and when you have $100 million walking out of a certain store that’s lost revenue. That’s lost money for your city, for your taxes.”

The task force continues to fight against organized retail crime, but they need help from the community and lawmakers.

“We need better statutes that can help us because the simple shoplift is not doing it,” Sgt. Tedeschi said.

Something Browne with Home Depot echoes.

“We have over a dozen attorney generals who have decided to place organized retail crime task force in their state, and these are the states where we see the most success between private and public partnerships in our ability to combat some of these events,” Browne explained. “Next up, is the federal government. At a federal level having some sort of organized retail crime task force and laws that support it properly, to address these crimes on a large scale. This is not petty shoplifting inside of stores, these are major criminal organizations with ties to multiple other criminal activities outside of just retail losses.”

Other states have felony punishments against organized crime involving theft of retail goods for the purpose of selling them through physical and online retail marketplaces. The local task force is calling on the community to persuade lawmakers to make a change.

“Put pressure to say, we need better statutes for this stuff,” Sgt. Tedeschi explained. “This isn’t just stealing food for them to live, this is supplying a drug habit. This is driving the prices up of our products. This is pushing retailers out of our city, out of our state because they can no longer afford it.”

“The last thing we’d want to do is shut down stores based on theft activity or the threat of potential violence that’s going to occur in these locations,” Browne said. “So we’re going to continue to make investments to ensure that we can prevent this as much as possible and continue to leverage our public partnerships to really drive good a good shopping environment for our customers in the store.”

Anyone can become a victim of organized retail crime, but CSPD has some tips.

“If you’re looking to buy products, a lot of people will go online to either eBay or Facebook Marketplace,” Sgt. Tedeschi explained. “If you’re seeing stuff that’s new in the box, it’s more than likely been stolen. So, if you’re seeing a deal that is too good to be true, it probably is.”

Browne said there is already work being done to combat retail theft while informing consumers along the way.

“Last year we passed the Inform Consumers Act that was designed to protect these consumers from buying these potentially stolen goods,” Browne explained. “You might go on to an e-commerce platform and see a product that we sell for dramatically less than we sell it for new in the box. The only reason for them to sell that product at those low prices is because there was some theft or fraud that occurred to get that product on those sites. So the Informed Consumer Act was a great first step in protecting consumers in what they purchase on these platforms. There’s still work to do.”

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