Fighting Back



photo: Brian Biggs

Retailers are starting to find ways to get back at shoplifters.

by Noel Weyrich

In the world of Center City retailing, Urban Outfitters has earned a reputation for getting heavy-handed with the light-fingered.

Urban Outfitters not only prosecutes shoplifters. It sues them.

Employing a curious corner of the law called "civil recovery," the Center City-based retail chain takes the extraordinary step of filing suit against its shoplifters, claiming compensation for the cost of catching and prosecuting them.

"In a way," says Stacy Irving, security director for the Center City District, "it’s their own restitution program."

It’s the kind of practice a retailer might want to publicize — if only to help deter visits from prospective thieves. But an Urban Outfitter spokesperson declines to comment about the policy.

Technically known as "retail theft," shoplifting can be a costly nuisance, but its victims tend to speak of it in hushed and frustrated tones — when they speak about it at all. And although the widespread perception is that retail theft is down from several years ago, the phenomenon isn’t measurable because even when shoplifters get caught, they seldom get arrested.

"One of the problems the police and prosecutors face is that many stores, for a variety of reasons, choose not to prosecute," says Irving. "Often they just want their merchandise back. The trouble is that retailers don’t recognize that criminals have a better communication network than AT&T. Word spreads as to who’s an easy target. And they know who doesn’t prosecute, and who does."

The issue of retailer reluctance to bring shoplifters to justice has led the District Attorney’s Office to secure from Municipal Court an unusual exception to the normal practice of calling witnesses. Now, if the judge is notified in advance, a witness to a Center City retail theft can be placed "on-call," if they promise to appear in court half an hour after being notified.

"It’s an attempt to reduce people’s reluctance to appear in court," explains William James, chief of the District Attorney’s municipal court unit. "Retail theft has a unique problem. Retailers don’t want to send an employee and pay them for being away from the job. Or small-time businesses may have to close their doors while they appear in court."

So far, though, the on-call service has been used mainly by big retailers, like Strawbridge’s, who have been able to reduce their security costs, says James, "by keeping their security people doing their job on the floor and keeping their court time to a minimum." Few smaller shopkeepers, he acknowledges, have used the program.

"Anything that they can do to make it easier to prosecute and put the true criminals behind bars, I love it," says Nana Goldberg, of I. Goldberg’s Sporting Goods. Generally, she says, "I’m not out to catch people, I’m out to prevent it, to let you know, ‘Don’t come here.’ But that’s why I need to prosecute someone, to make it clear."

Nationally, shoplifters make off with an estimated $10 billion worth of goods annually, just over one-half of one percent of the $1.7 trillion total in "non-durable" retail sales. These numbers suggest that in Center City’s $2.6 billion retail market, perhaps $15 million worth of unpaid-for stuff is sneaking out the doors each year.

Yet Goldberg exemplifies the ambivalence that many smaller retailers feel about fighting shoplifters. For instance, her store has long required shoppers to check their bags at the door before entering, even though the procedure is a turnoff for some people.

"We lose some real customers, because they don’t like the idea we’re assuming they’re stealing," she says. "Some people immediately get offended. Usually they’re people who aren’t used to shopping in the city — or they’re people who were intending to steal!"

Since professional shoplifters have learned all sorts of ways to defeat the electronic security tags on clothing and other goods, Goldberg says it’s more important than ever to keep a close watch on her customers. "I call it killing them with kindness," she laughs. "It’s excessive customer service. So if you’re there to buy something, you’re thrilled, and if you’re trying to steal, you’re getting out of there." But when someone gets caught, she acknowledges, "For a package of socks, you throw [the thief] out, you tell him, ‘We know what you look like, don’t come back.’"

William James says such non-reporting of thefts is very common.

"I’ve been in stores and seen it happen myself," he says. "It’s mainly in Ma and Pa operations. It’s unfortunate because now that guy has no incentive to stop stealing. He feels the system is not going to do anything to him."

Of course, even on the rare occasions when smaller retailers do have their shoplifters arrested (almost 1,100 people were charged with retail theft in Center City last year, down 16 percent from 1998), the difficulties of testifying in court prevent most prosecutions from being successful.

"It’s a horror show to go over [to court] and sit for hours, and then for the defendant not to show or for the attorneys not to be ready," says Susan Shain, owner of Touches at 15th and Locust. Shain, who once worked in the city court system, says that it’s typically not worth the trouble, "unless it’s a significant theft. You’re short a staff member, they have to go over to court, identify who it is, and go through that whole craziness." The on-call program, she says, is "fabulous," though she says she’s never had the occasion to use it.

The District Attorney’s Office and the Center City District began work on designing the on-call program several years ago, when Center City retail thieves were getting both more sophisticated and more brazen. Word was getting out that shopping bags lined with duct tape, or backpacks lined with tin, could defeat electronic security tags and labels. Criminals got hold of the special tools for removing the tags. In her office at the Center City District, Irving has a suitcase-sized cardboard box imprinted with a picture of a rocking horse. When it was recovered by the police, the box was found to be lined with sensor-resistant tape and had a trapdoor in its bottom for stashing stolen clothing.

At the same time, two or three years ago, another breed of thieves began employing more direct tactics. Organized crews of people were walking into even the bigger stores, stuffing bags with designer clothes and running out quickly, leaving store security flat-footed. A couple of guys walked into stockrooms at smaller stores and started passing stuff out the back doors to waiting accomplices.

"People were panicking and we started having meetings about crime," says Ben Frank, of the Center City Proprietors Association. "There was a guy, they had his picture up everywhere, who was just stealing stuff and running."

Retail theft is not the hot issue it was several years ago, he says.

What continues to be frustrating for the District Attorney’s Office, though, is that they regularly see defendants with a dozen or more arrests for retail theft and no convictions — because witnesses to the arrests never showed up to testify. Laws on retail theft, it turns out, can be very harsh for repeat offenders, and a third conviction, even for stealing something as little as a candy bar, is a felony. But without the first and second convictions, some habitual thieves appear in court each time with records looking pure as the driven snow.

In the meantime, Center City police and James’ office have teamed up to charge offenders with more serious crimes when they can. For instance, any kind of verbal threat or physical altercation with a security guard opens a shoplifter to charges of robbery — a felony. And when a band of teenagers started using aluminum-lined shopping bags last fall to steal designer clothes at the Gallery, police nipped the trend in the bud by charging the underaged culprits with "possession of an instrument of crime."

"Shoplifting is often driven by drug addiction," says James. "These are people trying to steal just enough property to buy their next dose of crack. That’s why we’re so interested in prosecuting these people. We realize they have other problems with their lives that we’d like to help them with — with the goal of having them stop stealing."

Shain points out, however, that some shoplifters are driven by another addiction — shoplifting itself.

"For some it’s a game, there’s a high to it," she says. These are people, she adds, who "look like your customer, they belong in your store, they know how to act and when to act."

She recalls the story of the Center City shopkeeper who finally installed a electronic security system in his store and had to face a rude surprise about the sources of his theft problems.

"It wasn’t the people he suspected," Shain says. "It was some of his regular customers. It was a horrifying situation for this guy, and for some of us, it would be a very similar situation."