GOTCHA! : Thwarting the Thieves : As Crooks Become Better at What They Do, Merchants and Law Enforcement Personnel Team Up in an Effort to Stay a Step Ahead

It was a daring strike on an otherwise normal shopping day, with two dozen men and women fanning out in the The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks. By the time they had finished, they had shoplifted clothing, jewelry and appliances worth thousands of dollars from scores of shops.

The thieves, dressed in everything from business suits to cutoffs, carefully thwarted security alarms and used scams such as the baby in the carriage maneuver.

Then they did something unexpected: After a successful getaway, the thieves turned and carried their loot back into the stores to show sales staffs where things had gone wrong. These were cops and the four-hour siege was a kind of final exam in the sheriff’s Center Watch crime prevention program.

As crooks have become better at what they do, county merchants and law enforcement personnel have geared up to stay ahead of them. And it seems to be paying off--even though thieves have upgraded their skills and there has been an increase in the activities of organized theft rings.

While nationwide shoplifting losses have climbed a dramatic 16% in the three years that ended in 1990, increases in Ventura County are minimal, according to the FBI’s bureau of crime statistics.

In the sheriff’s jurisdiction last year, incidents of grand theft through shoplifting (losses over $400) went up a little over 1%, while petty thefts dropped nearly 3%.

“I would say (Thousand Oaks) is in the upper 25% of communities with active crime prevention programs,” Senior Deputy Chris Lathrop of the sheriff’s Crime Prevention Bureau said. Lathrop engineered the giant law enforcement shoplifting exercise during the holiday season late last year.

Lathrop signed up more than 80 store owners--more than half of those in the mall--who agreed to challenge employees to blow the whistle on crime.

In 75% of the mock thefts, deputies got away with loot. One team fled with an entire rack of sportswear. Others made off with such high-profile items as a window mannequin, a three-piece set of luggage and a full-sized cedar chest.

“If you’ve been brazen enough to just go in, pick it up and walk out, the assumption is you bought it,” Lathrop said. “That’s one of the things we’ve been letting people know, that people do things like that and they are very bold about it.”

He was not unhappy with the performance of store employees. It seems that in a similar raid two years earlier, before the sheriff’s Center Watch program was implemented, deputies encountered no interference at all.

“We went up from zero catches to catching a quarter of them,” Lathrop said, “and several stores were total washouts for us--we had no opportunity to shoplift.”

The Center Watch program, which began early last fall, was adapted from the Neighborhood Watch concept. It includes coaching in not only theft prevention, but forgery and credit-card fraud as well. Its success has encouraged the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department to begin a similar program in Moorpark, and the department is planning to start one in Camarillo this summer.

In discussing shoplifting with merchants, deputies describe thieves’ techniques in detail, such as pairing activities where one “covers” a salesclerk, distracting the clerk with questions while a partner lifts merchandise.

Deputies also train store personnel to identify types of shoplifters. Most shoplifters, deputies say, are the opportunists--those who take a coveted jacket or watch for personal use, and often not so artfully. But 10% of shoplifters cause the bulk of store losses. They are the skilled thieves who take goods for resale.

These professionals appear to be putting more energy into their trade.

“They come in groups, and they are bolder,” a spokesperson for a local JCPenney said. “They seem to know the layouts of the stores, what time (employees) go on breaks, what time the shifts change. It’s a business, and they have conducted it like a business.”

The most coveted targets for organized thieves, merchants said, are jeans, anything with a GUESS? label and jewelry--in that order.

One loss-prevention officer for a local chain department store said jeans taken for the export market fetch well above the retail price in other countries.

“If Colombians sell a pair of GUESS? jeans in their country, they can get twice the U.S. dollar price,” he said. And prestige-hungry workers, he added, might spend a week’s salary on a pair of name-brand pants.

And, according to law enforcement officials, there are mega-rings trained in Colombia that are active throughout the western United States. And they’re willing, officials say, to supply all the pants they can shoplift.

These rings hit the city of Ventura several times last year, making loss statistics there mushroom out of proportion to other county areas. One department store loss alone totaled nearly $100,000--more than double the shoplifting losses for the entire city in the previous year, according to Ventura Police Department statistics. The goods were not recovered despite clear images of the thieves on videotape, and no suspects were ever arrested.

“They are not afraid of cameras,” said Sgt. Bob Anderson of the Ventura Police Department. Anderson, in response to increased crime in his city, began giving crime-prevention talks to retailers at the Buenaventura Mall last month.

Criminals, Anderson said, “are well-rehearsed, and if one of them gets caught, (he or she is) expendable. The rest of them just disappear into the woodwork.

“They have been known to establish up to $50,000 in bail,” he said, “You know people with big money are backing these guys.”

Rings might have up to 25 members who sometimes split up and visit several stores, or they might all descend on one outlet, according to law enforcement officials and store owners. The sheer numbers intimidate or confuse salesclerks, even when they realize that unusual activity is occurring.

“Most people are dumbfounded, and they freeze,” Lathrop said.

But Robert Lynn was anything but dumbfounded one day late last year when he stopped a ring of Colombians in his jewelry store in Ventura.

Lynn, who has been selling jewelry for 22 years, said he noticed suspicious behavior and subtle hand signals among several customers in his shop. The owner strode to the front door and locked seven members of the team inside. The eighth beat him to the exit, dropping a bag of jewelry worth $7,000 as he ran.

Officers arrested the conservatively dressed group. One was eventually convicted of burglary, the rest were held for deportation by the INS.

Anderson’s unit plans to hold more talks with mall merchants. They hope to familiarize owners with the modus operandi of rings, and have the merchants pass the training on to the front line of defense--salesclerks.

But training for retailers is not in the budget for all law enforcement agencies, including the relatively large Oxnard Police Department. In some cases, shopping center owners have initiated their own programs. At the Esplanade Mall, awareness seminars for sales staffs began last year. Operations manager Henry Avila attributes a decrease of 25% in grand theft incidents to this training.

Another means of defeating crooks would involve shoppers notifying sales personnel of thefts in progress. But store owners claim that this almost never occurs.

Lathrop recalled that during the shoplifting maneuvers one elderly woman watched deputies passing goods out of a store to team members waiting in the mall.

She approached the apparent criminals and firmly announced, “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” then turned and walked away from the scene.

“Citizen apathy is the biggest problem,” Lathrop said.

As to merchants’ taking bold steps to intervene in catching thieves, law enforcement personnel do not recommend taking risks.

Lynn, himself, does not suggest his techniques for the uninitiated. Prevention is usually the preferred method of dealing with thieves, through strategic location of alert staff.

Or as the jeweler put it: “The idea is to be sort of all over them like a wet blanket. The only time they can take it is when you’re not looking.”

ANTI-THEFT TIPS

Local law enforcement agencies and theft prevention experts offer store owners these tips for thwarting shoplifters:

* Let them know you’re there.

Greet everyone who comes into your store. Look them in the eyes. Customers like it; crooks know it means you could point them out later.

* Watch for atypical behavior.

Salesclerks know by long association what shoppers do. Anyone who has a different behavior might have a different agenda.

* Stay with that different person.

If you suspect someone, keep him or her in sight. Forget restocking racks or staying at your post. Trail that person until he or she exits the store.

* Be aware of places to put loot.

The most popular containers for stolen goods are large department store bags. Second are generic shopping bags. Third, baggy clothing.

* Have a plan of action.

If you see a theft, contact store security or law enforcement. If their response is delayed and you decide not to confront the thief, follow him or her to a vehicle. Get the license number.

* Prosecute. Every time.

Some stores still choose not to get involved in court actions. This sends the wrong message to crooks.