As the holidays draw near, thieves “break in and catch” US retailers hit By Reuters

By Julia Harte and Uday Sampath Kumar

(Reuters) – A large Nordstrom (NYSE 🙂 store in a Los Angeles shopping center on Monday night became the ultimate target of a robbery that “affected and robbed” luxury retailers in California and Illinois during the holiday shopping season. approaches.

The Los Angeles Police Department said it arrested three suspects. Local reports say 20 people were involved in the break-ins and robberies.

Law enforcement officials said they were concerned about the shameless nature of the robberies targeted at department stores in the two states last week – some involving dozens of people.

Videos of chaotic robberies, called “smash-and-grabs,” have flooded social media in recent days, with masked figures entering stores, running away with shopping bags, and fleeing in cars parked outside.

San Francisco Bay has been very tough given the high density of luxury merchants. The area is one of the richest in the country, with a median domestic income rate almost double that of the national, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

About 80 people entered a Nordstrom store in the town of Walnut Creek in the East Bay Area on Saturday night, stealing goods until police arrived and three people were arrested, according to Walnut Creek Police Department news.

“Police are investigating what was clearly a planned incident,” the release says.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed the California Highway Patrol to increase its presence near major retail sites.

Nordstrom said security is increasing by placing caregivers inside and outside stores and increasing training.

Louis Vuitton, part of the French luxury giant LVMH, and Burberry were also robbed by groups of people over the weekend, according to media reports.

The best purchase Co Inc (NYSE:) CEO Corie Barry said Tuesday that there has been a sharp rise in organized shoplifting in recent weeks.

“Sometimes it happens with a threatening device like a gun or other crowbars. Sometimes it literally goes in, takes it and leaves,” Barry said in a media call.

Barry said he was taking steps to prevent further theft by blocking display products and hiring security.

Experts in retail crime say the rise in pre-holiday crime is not a new phenomenon, but it has become more aggressive in recent years, partly because retailers have improved security measures.

“Retail crime groups need to cater for the holidays just as retailers do,” said Joseph LaRocca, a Los Angeles-based burglary prevention consultant and former vice president of loss prevention at the National Retail Federation.

The teams behind the latest robberies are sophisticated organizations, “not your usual thief who is going in and out of stealing small things,” he said. But that could make it easier for researchers to keep money on the heads of these operations.

LaRocca also said the passage of certain crimes with the passage of laws that reduce the penalties for certain crimes, such as the California Proposition 47, which reclassified some felony offenses in 2014 as criminal offenses.

But Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California-Irvine, said research has shown that increases in violent crime are unrelated to criminal justice reform measures, such as Proposition 47.

Kubrin said it was difficult to explain the origins of the wave of retail crime organized in California and other states.

“Between the pandemic and the economic challenges and problems between the police and the communities, many factors occur at the same time that make it difficult to distinguish one factor,” Kubrin said.