Study: Texas higher than national average for organized retail crime
Texas retailers are facing repeat and organized retail crime at a higher rate than the national average.
The top 10% of retail crime offenders were responsible for more than 71% of recorded retail crime across Texas stores last year, according to newly released data from global retail crime intelligence platform Auror. In contrast, across the U.S., the top 10% of offenders were responsible for more than 66% of the crime.
Top products reported stolen across the state were consumer electronics such as AirPods and QLED TVs, and health and beauty products including luxury makeup bags and perfume, according to Aura.
Other Texas retail crime data from Aura* is below.
•Almost 10% of all retail crime events occur between 9pm-10pm. The volume of events during this time is 2.1x higher than average.
•One in eight retail crime events are violent, involve the use of weapons or threatening behavior.
•Firearms are the most commonly used weapon, followed by knives and blades. Firearms made up 47% of all weapon events.
•Repeat offenders are more than two times more likely to be violent or use a weapon.
The new insights are drawn from some of North America’s largest retailers, which use Auror’s platform to log crime events in a consistent way after they occur in their stores. The structured reporting in the platform helps retailers connect the dots on repeat offenders and organized crime that historically are treated as one-off incidents, the company stated.
“Digital collaboration has helped us build higher quality cases to surface repeat offenders — even cross-state ORC — with support from multiple law enforcement agencies such as Katy PD, Texarkana PD and Livingston PD,” said Brian Huff, director of loss prevention for Boot Barn, which has a large footprint in Texas. “It’s helped us reduce investigative timelines from several weeks to 48 hours or less thanks to structured reporting and effective digital evidence sharing, helping us better address the issue of ORC in our stores.”
According to Raul Aguilar, head of law enforcement partnerships for Auror and former Homeland Security Investigations’ deputy assistant director responsible for transnational organized crime, “retail crime isn’t just about shop theft — it’s also about the violence, threats and intimidation directed at vulnerable frontline workers everyday”.
“The repeat offenders impacting stores are just the tip of the iceberg; these crimes are often connected to organized crime rings operating across the country and even transnationally,” Aguilar said. “Repeat offenders aren’t brand-loyal and don’t respect jurisdictional boundaries, so it’s great to see retailers and law enforcement working together through digital collaboration to surface those causing the most harm, rather than dealing with them as one-off events."
*All data has been entered by retailers using Auror.