Good morning. It's Wednesday, Oct. 18. Here's what you need to know to start your day.
- What we know (and don't) about the rise in retail theft
- The House failed to elect Jim Jordan as its next speaker
- What to know before heading to California's popular ski resorts
- And here's today's e-newspaper
Putting California's rising retail theft in context
Shopping in person feels different these days. I first noticed a shift at my local grocery store, where some hygienic products were cordoned off by plexiglass. An employee now monitors the zone and a man dressed like a Call of Duty character patrols the store exits, with a gun strapped to his side.
At my local Target, I found laundry detergent, body wash and other personal care items locked behind security glass. I had to call a worker several times to unlock and relock shelves of products I used to just put in my shopping bag with ease.
Watch the news or scan social media for five minutes and you'll understand what's driving that unsettling shift. We've all seen the videos of store robberies as groups of people stuff bags with high-end merchandise and walk out the front door. In some cases, those team-effort crimes are part of an organized network of thieves who then sell the stolen items. That's referred to as organized retail crime.
It's not just retailers reacting: Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in August that the state would triple the California Highway Patrol's resources in the city of Los Angeles to address the issue. The CHP operates an Organized Retail Crime Task Force, which has investigated roughly 1,850 retail crimes statewide since its formation in 2019.
Also in August, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass announced a new regional task force had been created to "aggressively investigate these incidents and hold individuals that are responsible for these crimes fully accountable."
But just how pervasive is this crime trend? I spoke with some California crime and policy experts to understand what the data show (and don't show) and how the perception of these crimes is affecting Californians.
Retail theft has increased, but the data are murky
Magnus Lofstrom is director of criminal justice at the Public Policy Institute of California. He and his team recently analyzed the available data on retail theft in the state's 15 most populous counties.
Part of the challenge in tracking these crimes is that retail theft can fall under several different crime categories, depending on the value of the items taken and whether force was used or threatened during the crime.
What the data do show is that overall felony retail theft was up 16% in 2022 compared with 2019. A closer look showed commercial burglary specifically was up 13%. Commercial robbery, which includes thefts in which force is used or threatened (like some smash-and-grab thefts), was up about 13% in that same time frame.
And when it comes to misdemeanor shoplifting, the data show a 29% spike in 2022 vs. 2019, though the PPIC report notes that the rate for that crime remains 8% below its pre-pandemic level.
Researchers found that both commercial burglary and robbery rates had increased notably in the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley counties, but that Los Angeles County experienced the highest commercial robbery rate in 2022.
Overall? Commercial burglary reached its highest rate since 2008, "and the commercial robbery rate rose to roughly where it was in 2017," Longstrom and fellow PPIC researcher Brandon Martin wrote in a blog post.
Lofstrom told me that although state crime data can show the overall trend of retail theft, "we cannot separately identify if a particular incident was driven by organized retail theft." He also noted that it's difficult to paint in broad, statewide strokes when it comes to crime.
"Crime tends to be local, so we can see some increases in one particular area and not see it in other areas," he said. "It's very difficult to tease out exactly what's behind these [trends] — and especially in these rapidly changing and challenging times."
The media's role in shaping perceptions
Yes, retail theft is up in California and elsewhere in the U.S. But those increases come even as overall crime rates have decreased notably from the rates experienced in the 1990s.
How the media frames and covers crime can have a strong impact on the perception of how safe we are. And with the prevalence of video monitoring in public spaces — both surveillance technology and our cameras that double as phones — it's never been easier to record and share video of people behaving badly.
In L.A. for example, violent crime and some types of property crime have fallen over the last year. Despite that, there's a "disconnect between statistics and public perception" of safety, my colleague Libor Jany wrote this week.
"Some research suggests that part of the problem is a feedback loop in which people have a tendency to focus on and remember negative information [about] crime or the economy," he reported. "Even though crime has been trending downward for more than a quarter of a century, in nearly every year since 1996 Gallup poll respondents have said they felt less safe than the year before."
Simply put, when the news media regularly fills broadcasts or social feeds with visuals of criminal chaos, they're sending a signal to the public: this is what you should be concerned about.
As Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology law and society at UC Irvine, witnessed firsthand recently, it's difficult to shift gears to nuanced dialogue about crime after the emotional reaction of seeing violence, brazen thefts and other misdeeds. The spectacle of watching crime tends to trump a lesson on crime statistics.
She described a recent appearance on MSNBC during which she aimed to offer perspective rooted in the available data as footage of a recent smash-and-grab robbery played during her interview. She said she received phone calls from viewers criticizing her as out of touch with the reality people are experiencing in their communities.
"I was talking facts and trends and data and context, which is absolutely boring and nobody cares about it," she told me. "But seeing the videos [is] extremely emotive. It's hard to watch those videos and not feel your blood boil and get angry and feel that a wrong has been done, because it has."
Retailers citing crime for closing stores 'tells a partial truth'
Looking at the data, it's clear retail theft is having an impact on businesses. There's a reason they're spending money on armed guards at grocery stores and locking up shampoo and toothpaste.
A National Retail Federation survey stated that retailers lost $112.1 billion to "shrink" — an industry term for lost inventory — in 2022. But shrink also includes items lost or damaged in the supply chain process and employee theft. And as The Times' Sam Dean reported in 2021, the figures retailers provide on theft aren't always reliable.
Target announced last month that it could close nine of its U.S. stores, with four of those in California. Company officials said they "cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance."
But Kubrin said that framing only "tells a partial truth." Among the truths not mentioned by Target and other retailers, she explained: inflation has made the economics of running stores more challenging.
"Everything's gotten much more expensive," she said, noting that consumers are spending less on discretionary items and many are choosing to shop online rather than go to a store IRL. That drop in foot traffic began before the pandemic, but the historic world health crisis accelerated the trend.
"Crime is a piece of the puzzle," she told me. "It's not the entire puzzle."
Today's top stories
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is on the House floor Tuesday after failing to win enough votes on the first ballot to be elected speaker. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
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And finally ... a gripping photo
The aftermath of the Hamas assault on communities near Gaza, and the battle to regain control by Israeli forces, could be seen at the Kibbutz in Beeri, Israel, on Saturday. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Today's photo is from Times photographer Marcus Yam in the aftermath of a Hamas assault on communities near Gaza. Across Israel and inside the Gaza Strip, the sheer scale of deaths, the numbing numbers of fatalities, are overwhelming the living.
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