Flash Mob Robberies
The North Group, Inc
"There are places in the world you wouldn't go without us, but there's nowhere in the world you couldn't go with us."
Flash Mob Robberies – Recent thefts are causing a call for action to help prevent more businesses from leaving.?
Recent Events:
August 8, 2023?
About 50 people swarmed a Los Angeles mall Saturday and fled with high-end handbags and other items from the Yves Saint Laurent store totaling nearly $300,000. The thieves made their getaway in approximately 20 vehicles.
August 14, 2023
Thirty to 50 people converged on the Nordstrom store at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills, CA. Wearing hoodies and face masks, the group attacked security guards that attempted to intervene using bear spray. Authorities estimate the group made off with merchandise valued between $60,000 to $100,000. They made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of luxury handbags and high-end clothing.
Why is it happening right now?
Many factors help contribute to the rise of flash rob incidents. This includes recent criminal justice reforms, which have lowered criminal penalties and increased the value threshold to prosecute cases. Police departments are currently understaffed and are having a challenging time replacing officers that have left the profession.?
Prosecutors are unwilling to make theft cases a high priority. People are committing copycat crimes to hopefully have similar success.?
Organized thefts can involve armed individuals with blunt objects, metal bars, guns, pepper spray, and other weapons to break the glass. Retailers state that their employees are concerned for their safety and are scared to go to work. Some employees have been injured and sprayed with bear pepper spray. Individuals that are seeking work will not fill out retail job applications. Most of the stolen items are quickly sold online. The ease of selling stolen goods on websites like Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and eBay also helps to protect the thief's identity. Offenders will utilize the internet to coordinate with other potential offenders and share video footage.?
Who is committing the crimes?
Typical flash robs involve 20-50 individuals working together. From arrests that have been made, most of the suspects are under 20 years old, with some young boys and girls as young as 13-15. This type of crime is viewed as a low-risk-high reward. Suspects are usually armed with sledgehammers or other blunt instruments to break display windows or use them as weapons. Some suspects have been using bear spray on store security personnel and customers.??
How are they organizing??
Social media platforms make it easy to organize a flash mob, coordinating multiple perpetrators without detailed planning that law enforcement could have recognized. According to Norton Security, Telegram is especially popular with criminals for communication and selling stolen goods. More than 60 percent of Telegram users are in the sweet spot of 15-25 years old. After recruiting the team, which could be as large as 50 people, they set appointments for meeting up where they are given whatever tools they will need to grab merchandise, the location target, and where they will reconvene to deliver the goods and collect their bounties, ranging from $500-$1000 each. The organizers will usually store the stolen goods in houses or storage units and post them on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay, where their identities are protected. That does not mean the platforms approve of the practice. Their terms of use prohibit such activity. They do not, however, enforce those rules.
Concerns:
The protection of employees and customers is vital. Proper training of employees to never resist or interfere with a flash robbery under any circumstances is needed. Employees can capture relevant information for the post-incident investigation, such as the descriptions of individuals—especially leaders—and vehicles. Further, employees should be trained in security awareness, which is simply a matter of paying attention (e.g., implementing a "no smartphone use" policy when on shift), knowing what to look for; and knowing what to do in the event of an incident. For example, do employees know the signs of potential robbery or violence? Are they empowered to and educated about reporting and managing a potential issue (or how not to from a liability standpoint)? Do they understand how to operate the electronic security controls put in place?
Most importantly, can they recognize suspicious behavior and trust their instincts in detecting anomalous behavior? Videos of the coordinated mass robberies — showing people running out of stores with goods, jumping into cars, and speeding off, and footage of police chasing and arresting suspected thieves — have gone viral on TikTok, YouTube, and other social media platforms. Such content could be inspiring "copycat" thefts around the country.
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How to Mitigate the Threat
Position trained security guards both in and outside the business. Train employees not to get involved physically. Having eyes on the outside perimeter would help identify the mob arriving and unloading from their vehicles. The business doors can then be locked, and law enforcement notified. Glazed shatterproof windows can help prevent easy entry into the business when locked. Having a monitored high-resolution CCTV on the business's exterior can help with identification and evidence gathering for future case prosecution. Establish a door check and only let a few people in the industry have access to the products. Real-time social media monitoring of the business and location could help identify a preparation or plan of attack. Utilization of CPTED principles, including proper lighting, line of sight principles, pedestrian movement, and natural barriers. Having proper product placement by limiting accessibility and avoiding placing high-value items next to an exit. Recently, an Organized Retail Theft Task Force was created by the California Highway Patrol to help deal with organized crime and retail thefts.?
Unlivable and Unsafe, Businesses Leaving the Area
In San Francisco, John Chachas, the owner of luxury Gump's, warned that this 2023 holiday season may be the last for his company. Gump's sells luxury home décor and fine jewelry at his store in San Francisco. The retailer first opened in 1861 and has warned that rising crime and homelessness in the city means this could be its last year operating.?
He said San Francisco is unlivable for its residents, unsafe for his employees, and unwelcoming for visitors. Other businesses have closed their doors in the city, including Old Navy, Amazon Go, and Whole Foods. Companies either claimed staff safety or plunging sales as reasons for leaving.
Visitors to San Francisco state that the city is dirtier. Incidents of graffiti have risen since the start of the pandemic, with a particular surge in graffiti abatement requests in early 2023, and the city's Public Works team has been much slower to clear it up since 2020. There is a perception of a rise in public drug use and an increasing number of unsheltered homeless people. San Francisco's Department of Public Health confirmed that there had been a dramatic increase in overdose deaths from drugs, including opioids, heroin, and cocaine, since 2017. San Francisco has been dealing with a housing affordability crisis since before the pandemic, contributing to an uptick in the unhoused population in the city's downtown. According to the results of a University of California, San Francisco survey released in June, most participants attributed their situations to the unsustainable cost of housing in the city.
https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/latest-news/online-exclusives/2021/robbed-in-a-flash-assessing-risk-for-mass-smash-and-grab-incidents/
President at Calidad Services, Inc
1 年Excellent read. Thanks for sharing