Loss prevention

I had another great question submit it to me by email. This reader wanted to know what, if anything, I knew about loss prevention. I assume that he meant at local retail stores, although most large hotel casinos will have gift shops and other retail or point-of-sale locations, where surveillance may perform loss prevention duties in conjunction with security.

It turns out I know quite a bit about the loss prevention landscape out there, having work for a large retailer doing loss prevention in the 90s. I won't say the exact name of this retailer, but their name rhymes with small heart. You figure it out.

What I learned from them, and what I have learned subsequently to that, is that while surveillance and loss prevention may be necessary to the operation of a large retail store, just as they are in a casino, they are not something that management or ownership wants to spend any money on. All gaming jurisdictions require casinos to have a certain level of surveillance, by law. There are no such statutory requirements for a retail store however, no matter how big.

So retail ownership will spend money on surveillance, usually while kicking and screaming and complaining about it the whole time. You see, surveillance is not a profit Center. It doesn't generate any money. So ownership and management usually look at it as a black hole where they just throw money into.

They fail to realize that a proactive surveillance department, and a comprehensive loss prevention policy can make a real effect on a retailers bottom line. Whenever I have problems getting management to spend money on new equipment or more people, I like to get them to think of the surveillance department as a service organization and that the customers that we were working for we're actually the department managers of that business.

So anyways, here are some little secrets that loss prevention professionals probably would prefer the general public not to know.

First of all, even though they will deny it, all loss prevention agents profile. A lot. What do I mean by profiling? It means that the young black male in jeans and a t-shirt will get a lot more attention than a middle-aged white man wearing a suit. Yes, it is profiling, and it's probably racist. But it's also a fact of life.

Remember how I told you that business owners are cheap? That means that hours allotted for loss prevention Personnel are very small. Even for a business that's open 24 hours, there won't be loss prevention personnel on duty the entire time. Sometimes you will hear an overhead page for "security to scan section A",  or move cameras to section B, for example. Usually that means that there is no one on duty in loss prevention and that is a store manager's way of making someone they suspect of shoplifting too scared to actually continue with the deed.

Also loss prevention  departments are very small, usually only one or two loss prevention people are on duty at any one particular time. This means that if you see two loss prevention agents chasing after someone in the parking lot or questioning someone at the front door, there probably isn't anyone in the loss prevention surveillance room keeping track of the rest of the store.

Additionally, the most dangerous part of loss prevention, from the business owners' point of view, is in making a false arrest, or detaining someone for shoplifting who doesn't actually have anything on him that you shoplifted. This will get you in lawsuit territory very quickly, so most retail establishments have a policy about when you can and when you can't detain someone.

They almost always insist on there being unbroken visual contact with a subject who they have observed shoplifting, either by putting someone something in a bag or in their pocket or stuffed into their pants or whatever. If that visual contact is ever lost, say by the perpetrator entering a bathroom, then a detention is usually not allowed, at least by policy. 

This is why you will sometimes see notices posted in and outside of restroom inferences. These notices say things like "Shoplifting is a crime and will leave you with a record that will haunt you for the rest of your life", or words to that effect.
They do that because once a shoplifter has entered the bathroom  he or she is out of view of anyone who saw them shoplift something.  According to their own company policy, they're really not supposed to detain anyone after that has happened.

The last secret that I want to tell you about, is that retailers expect a certain level of shrinkage per month. In fact they Factor it in to how they price things in the entire store. In the 90s, when I was doing this, at a medium cised retail store, they expected around $3,000 a day to just walk out the door without being paid for. That adds up to a hundred thousand a month. It's probably an even higher number now with inflation.

So that's all for now, if anyone has any specific questions or comments, please reply below. Thanks for reading, and good luck everybody.