Retailers vigilant on theft Bangor Mall chief: Stores have strategy

BANGOR – Along with this holiday season’s welcome influx of shoppers, an increase of not-so-welcome folks also is expected in area stores: shoplifters.

A year-round problem, shoplifting last year cost businesses $10 billion nationwide, although concerns about shoplifting heighten in the weeks before and after the holidays, the busiest times for many stores.

“Keeping vigilant,” is how Bruce Soper, Bangor Mall manager, describes efforts the mall and its 66 stores are taking to combat shoplifting. Store employees have been trained on what to keep watch for in terms of behavior and activity, said Soper, who wanted to retain an upper hand on shoplifters by not identifying what the employees are looking for.

Security within the mall differs from store to store, with the four larger anchor stores having the more extensive security systems in place and more ground to cover.

At Sears, a small room with a bank of 22 monitors is the center of security for the anchor retailer that employs a half-dozen people to monitor and patrol the store. Some of the television monitors pan across sections of the store, while many are fixed on specific potentially vulnerable departments, such as jewelry and electronics. Another one monitors a secured door accessible only to employees, behind which is stored the high-end items, such as digital cameras, said Bill Lawrence, asset protection manager for the store.

Cameras can zoom in or out, and by switching from camera to camera, employees can follow someone throughout the store and radio to another employee on the floor when a suspicious person is seen hiding items in clothing or bags or in some other way.

The cameras also can monitor employees, who accounted for half of the annual store losses last year, according to a national retail survey.

On the job for just two weeks, Lawrence already has seen one customer move from exit to exit with a 19-inch television – valued at $200 – before realizing he was being followed. He put down the television and left, although he has been seen back in the store several times. Then there was a woman who hid seven bottles of perfume, each valued at $60 to $80, in a baby carriage before getting caught.

Lawrence, a former law enforcement officer with the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department, said that an increase in drug use, including heroin, is contributing to the rising incidents of shoplifting in the area, which many people incorrectly assume is a juvenile problem.

At the mall’s J.C. Penney store last Tuesday, for example, Bangor police arrested an Orland woman who was out on bail from Knox County on a drug trafficking charge and from Hancock County on a robbery charge, after it was reported she tried to conceal some clothing. The 26-year-old woman is accused of placing a sweatshirt around her neck and concealing some slippers in her 9-year-old daughter’s coat before trying to leave the store, according to the police report.

Local police are well aware of the concerns that the holiday season brings at the mall area in particular. Bangor police Sgt. Larry Weber estimates that calls to the area – from shoplifting to accidents and traffic – increase 25 percent during the holiday season.

The department has been given the green light to increase the police presence in the mall area over the next few weeks, but Weber thinks that might be hard to do because of manpower. The department is still short about five active officers for patrol.

The increased presence of police, however, has proved effective in the past. As a patrolman in the late 1980s, Weber remembered two pairs of officers being assigned undercover duty in the mall area over a two-week period. The four officers handled more than 50 criminal complaints, including netting a group of teenagers who had been shoplifting items by the armful.

“There’s a lot going on out there,” Weber said.

Stores, meanwhile, are trying to find any way to reduce the opportunity for shoplifting and fraud.

Home Depot has tightened its return policy in an effort to reduce shoplifting losses, in which people try to return items without a receipt that were not bought from the store. Some items returned have been stolen, bought at a different retailer, or hadn’t even left the store.

Home Depot spokeswoman Shelley Schumaker said the chain’s policy had been lenient up until earlier this year. She said that previously items could be returned without a receipt for 90 days. Now with no receipt, customers returning the product within 90 days can get only a store credit.

Lawrence said the store’s motivation for its aggressive approach to shoplifting not only benefits the store but the paying customers as well, who eventually pay the price for shoplifting.

And that’s not pocket change, according to University of Florida criminologist Richard Hollinger, who heads up the National Retail Security Survey. Hollinger has estimated that a family of four will spend more than $440 in higher prices this year because of inventory theft.

Overall, Hollinger’s report found that the nation’s retailers lost $31.3 billion last year, including $15 billion through employee thefts, $10 billion from shoplifting and the rest through vendor fraud and administrative error.