A convenience store manager sinks into her sofa, head spinning from a hectic day. She opens the paper to read of another fatal shooting in the area.
It’s bad news on top of a bad day, hours of which she’s spent going over her store’s losses. A good chunk is due to shoplifting, but the manager has come to think it’s not worth the valuable time to file complaints against petty thieves.
Although conscientious, she never considers some of the thefts from her store could be connected to the murder of which she’s reading.
The scenario isn’t far-fetched, as authorities stress that shoplifting at times feeds a pipeline leading to purchases — some of guns — by groups like violent local gangs.
“A good portion of shoplifting incidents are tied to groups dealing in organized retail theft,” Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean F. Dalton said on Friday.
He spoke a day after taking part in a meeting in Deptford Township between law enforcement, township officials and local business owners and managers focusing mostly on local shoplifting problems.
Officials there say businesses must help reduce shoplifting by increasing solid security practices and filing complaints against alleged thieves when police are called.
In the chain of theft and resale, Dalton explained, a shoplifter is just part of the chain, bringing stolen items to a “fence,” or middleman of sorts. The fence resells the item to someone else, perhaps a legitimate vendor.
“We’re seeing all kinds of stolen merchandise end up in bodegas in Camden or in flea markets, or online,” Dalton said.
But proceeds in the chain can and do end up in the hands of groups other than the theft rings — groups like gangs, large and small.
The trade involves “a variety of gangs,” Dalton explained. “It can be a subset of a larger group engaging in local activity.”
The product in the chain that ends up in gang or other criminal hands is hard to predict.
“It can vary,” Dalton said of gang proceeds. “It can be drugs, weapons or other items going to further illegal activity.”
“In some of our major shopping areas, we see people (dealing in stolen goods) coming from all over the Delaware Valley...even from New York,” the prosecutor continued.
Of course, there are plenty of less lethal consequences to the stolen goods trade. Those discussed at Thursday’s meeting in Deptford involved the high cost to that township for numerous police responses to shoplifting reports.
Several business owners raised concerns officials understood. They included the potentially high cost in time — and therefore money — in following through on shoplifting cases.
Filling out reports, filing charges and testifying in court can take lots of valuable time. And it could take more time, some argued, when the accused doesn’t show to court.
Officials maintain, however, that when businesses continue to refuse to file charges, thieves learn they can target businesses again and again. The result — beside the criminal pipeline that compounds crime in the area — is a huge chunk of time taken from officers who could be on patrol, learning of crime issues from valuable community resources.
When officers spend hours on a shoplifting call and the business then refuses to file a complaint, it becomes ever more frustrating, police say.
Combating the problem involves lots of players, Dalton said.
“We need to have a coordinated response between the governing bodies, police and the prosecutors,” he explained.
“But it starts with the retailers being good corporate citizens who will engage and make sure shoplifters are put on notice that they’ll follow up on prosecuting these individuals.”
Dalton and other officials also discussed methods of preventing shoplifting at the Deptford meeting.
Township Police Sgt. Major George Johnson hoped to diffuse fears business owners have of being sued or charged for trying to intervene directly.
He cited state law that holds a merchant cannot be held liable for detaining a person she believes has concealed an item and tried to steal it. That’s as long as the merchant has acted reasonably in holding the person and hasn’t held the alleged thief for an unreasonable amount of time.
Johnson also stressed that a merchant doesn’t have to wait until a shoplifter exits with an item. If she has cause to believe someone is concealing an item to be stolen, she can act then as well.
In any case, a business is free to write its own policy on the matter, whether allowing employees to intervene or not.
Officials also encouraged businesses to instill thorough security measures, like video surveillance. Making copies of video and turning them over to police as promptly as possible can be a big help, they said.
Dalton pointed out that store video could help identify a shoplifter as the suspect in a more serious crime like an assault.
Training employees with clear policy on what to do in shoplifting cases can go a long way as well.
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Contact staff writer Joe Green at 856-845-3300 ext. 253 or jgreen@southjerseymedia.com