Newsom deploys CHP to crack down on organized retail theft. What that means in Stanislaus

In a bid to curb retail theft, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced he was deploying the California Highway Patrol in “key retail districts” across the state this holiday shopping season.

Newsom’s office added that the CHP’s Organized Retail Crime Prevention Task Force is out to crack down this season “through proactive and confidential law enforcement operations.”

“When criminals run out of stores with stolen goods, they need to be arrested and escorted directly into jail cells,” Newsom said in a statement, adding that the CHP is out “to stop these criminals in their tracks during the holiday season, and year-round.”

The task force has regional teams in Southern California, the Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento and “will be collaborating with retailers, loss prevention, and local law enforcement agencies.”

Within Stanislaus County, task force officers assigned to the CHP Central Division “have been and will continue to conduct ‘Blitz’ operations on various dates and times,” Sgt. Rob Montano told The Modesto Bee. “A Blitz operation consists of a joint effort among our uniform, undercover investigators, retail loss prevention and security personnel, for the purpose of targeting and deterring theft crimes from retail establishments.”

In the Modesto area, teams of thieves have hit Dick’s Sporting Goods and the Apple Store, both at Vintage Faire Mall, the Sisk Road BevMo, and Ulta stores in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties, among other retailers.

While much media attention has been devoted to organized smash-and-grab thefts in cities like San Francisco, it’s not really clear that such crime is happening at rates that some politicians are claiming.

Earlier this year, Walgreens executive James Kehoe said during a quarterly earnings call that “maybe we cried too much last year” about theft as a problem facing the company, according to CNN.

And as the Marshall Project reported earlier this year, many (nearly 40%) law enforcement agencies do not report their most recent crime data to the FBI, and even if they do, they do not separate retail theft from other categories of theft and larceny.

Instead, its lobbying groups like the National Retail Federation that sound the alarm about organized retail theft.

But according to the Marshall Project, the annual survey released by the federation shows that external theft represents only a portion of companies’ losses, with two-thirds of missing merchandise attributable to employee theft, process failures or unknown sources.