WA retailers lose $3 billion to theft every year. Here’s what Gig Harbor is doing to stop this

There are people who come to Gig Harbor to settle down. Others come to sail. And some come to steal.

Shoplifters come “from all over,” Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey told The News Tribune. He listed a long list of cities: Port Angeles, Bellingham, Portland, Yakima, Spokane, Tacoma. Police conducted a statistical analysis of where their criminals come from but could find no pattern, he said.

The department started a program to combat shoplifting in the fall of 2021, the so-called ‘Business Check’ program. Three years later, it seems to be working, he said, although its success is difficult to quantify because of the nature of how it works: An employee who notices suspicious activity in or near a store can call 911 and request a “business check.” . ” An officer will show up, pending availability, in the hope of deterring potential criminals from taking action once they see police in the area.

If no crime occurs, no report is made and therefore there is no precise data indicating how many crimes such corporate controls may have prevented.

The News Tribune recently rode with a Gig Harbor police officer to learn how police look for suspicious activity, looked at examples of police reports of business checks in cases where an alleged crime occurred, and learned how the program works.

Shoplifting in Gig Harbor

Gig Harbor’s 2023 crime rate fell near the middle among Pierce County police jurisdictions, according to data from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. With an overall crime rate of 58.6 crimes per 1,000 residents, it ranks eighth among the 19 Pierce County jurisdictions included in the Crime in Washington 2023 report.

Of the crimes committed in Gig Harbor that year, theft-theft crimes came out on top at 26.8 incidents per 1,000 residents, according to the report. Theft includes both shoplifting and other forms of theft, and refers to “the unlawful taking, carrying, leading or driving away of property from the possession of another,” the report said. The second highest crime rate in Gig Harbor was 5.6 per 1,000 for motor vehicle theft.

Data from the Gig Harbor Police Department also shows that the stores hit hardest by shoplifters are big box stores. The top five stores in Gig Harbor with the most shoplifting from January 1, 2023 to September 16, 2024 were Albertsons, Target, Famous Footwear, Safeway and Rite Aid.

Busey provided an excerpt from a Sept. 17 police report that illustrates how a business audit works. An officer responded to a request for a business check at the Albertsons at 11330 51st Ave at approximately 8:11 a.m. in Gig Harbor, where he heard a man in a bucket hat was acting suspiciously while pushing a cart containing several cases of Tide Pods — a commonly stolen item — and two cases of beer.

“He left the cart in the store after observing us in the business,” the officer wrote in the report.

At the request of an employee, the officer told the man the business would like him entered, which the man acknowledged before leaving the parking lot, the report said.

According to reports from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the reported number of thefts in Gig Harbor dropped to 350 in 2023, the lowest annual number among reported incidents between 2019 and 2023.

During an annual crime report at the Sept. 9 City Council meeting, Busey offered several reasons why he believes shoplifting — calculated as part of theft offenses — has decreased between 2022 and 2023. company policies may have reduced shoplifting, he said. Emphasis patrols on shopliftingThese are periodic operations to concentrate arrests over a short period of time, and corporate audits may also have contributed, he said. And easing restrictions on jail bookings after the COVID-19 pandemic has made it easier for officers to take suspected shoplifters to jail “on day one” and prevent repeat offenses, he told the council.

Store policies can make stopping shoplifters difficult

Busey told The News Tribune that the department invented the Business Check program in part because they felt loss prevention policies were too weak for some larger, corporate-owned stores.

“Most employees can’t confront shoplifters, and that’s not a bad thing,” Busey said. “We don’t necessarily want confrontations. That’s how people get hurt, right? But we also found that most employees couldn’t even call 911 to report the shoplifting.”

Nationally, shoplifting contributed to a 1.6% “shrinkage rate” among retailers in fiscal year 2022, according to a research report from the National Retail Federation. Shrink, or shrinkmeasures the inventory companies lose due to theft, both by employees and non-employees, administrative or operational errors and other causes, according to the National Retail Federation. As a percentage of their total revenues in 2022, retailers lost $112 billion, and external theft was responsible for 36% of this total, the study found.

Violence in stores has also increased, leading more retailers to support a “hands-off” approach to shoplifters, the press release said; 41% of respondents in a survey of retailers said that “no employee has the authority to stop or arrest shoplifters,” up from 38% the year before.

“Like many in the industry, we are seeing increased levels of blatant shoplifting and organized retail crime,” Rite Aid spokesperson Michelle McEnroe told The News Tribune via email on Oct. 17. “We are taking an active role in assisting law enforcement in their pursuit of shoplifters, continuing our efforts to educate community leaders about the impact of shoplifting and advocating for solutions.”

Busey said he thought the reason for such a policy might be fear of lawsuits or negative publicity if the store got the wrong person. That is why the police decided to make an arrangement with their control room. South Sound 911 provides emergency services for jurisdictions in Pierce County.

If an employee calls 911 for a “company check,” the dispatcher will not ask them any questions beyond the employee’s name and company name and location, according to a letter explaining the program that Busey said was distributed to several vendors. When officers are available, they respond to that location knowing that something suspicious may be going on, but they don’t know who they are looking for or what the situation is.

“We’re assuming it’s probably a shoplifter, but we don’t know for sure,” Busey said. “But our presence alone reassures the employees. If the suspect is still at that location, he will typically leave without stealing anything and the crime is averted.”

Their goal is to prevent crime from happening in the first place, rather than reacting after the fact, he said.

Busey said some companies have banned their employees from even asking for company checks. That’s disappointing, he said.

“It’s really a non-invasive way to address a potential crime,” he said. “We don’t profile anyone. We do not falsely accuse anyone. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

He declined to share the specific businesses that have stopped using the program, but said the department is aware because employees at those stores have said they can no longer make calls when talking to officers conducting routine checks.

A national problem

Mike Johnson, senior vice president of policy and government affairs for the Washington Retail Association, told The News Tribune that they applaud Gig Harbor’s Business Check program. But not every jurisdiction has the law enforcement, prosecutors and prisons to tackle shoplifting the same way, he said.

He also emphasized that retailers’ biggest problem is organized shoplifting, not petty shoplifting. From organized shoplifting, criminals make a profit by selling stolen goods. They often use that income to finance other criminal activities, such as human trafficking, illegal drug use and prostitution, he said.

“That’s what’s destroying us financially,” he said.

Each year, the retail industry in Washington state loses approximately $3 billion to theft, and Johnson says organized retail crime is a major part of that.

Busey said business checks help prevent both organized retail theft and petty shoplifting. Sometimes police see cars serving as “lookouts” in the parking lot while the shoplifting is taking place, which Busey said is often associated with organized groups.