The Boston City Council held a hearing recently to discuss the issue of shoplifting around the city’s retail centers and commercial districts.

While much of the discussion focused on current hotspots – Downtown and the South End specifically – officials said they are seeing some stores in outlying neighborhoods being specifically targeted.

“A lot of the hotspots in terms of neighborhoods and areas of the city are pretty obvious – Downtown Crossing is a significant area of concern, the South End and Back Bay, Boyleston Street and the South Bay Mall are all areas of concern – but we also see it in a lot of other areas,” said Boston Police Department (BPD) Bureau of Investigative Services Superintendent Paul McLaughlin. “But we’re also seeing it at Field’s Corner, 500 Geneva Ave., the Target in there is one, as well as the Target in Roslindale Square. Now if you went out to District E-5, over the span of the entire district, they don’t have a major problem per se, but they do have very specific locations: In Jamaica Plain, the Whole Foods and the Walgreens, for example. So there are business districts that are target areas, but when you get in the outlying districts, it’s more about specific locations.”

McLaughlin said each BPD uses its own discretion with how it wants to attack those hot spot problems.

Councilors, BPD officers and representatives of retail groups all spoke during the hearing, and the main issue centered around what they called “professional shoplifters” or “organized” retail crime. These incidents have been extensively covered in the national media, especially when a large group of people rush into a store to shoplift.

And McLaughlin said the BPD is looking into and concentrating on such incidents – or any other incidents that appear to be organized – in order to maximize impact on the problem. He said the newly-formed

“There is a need to prioritize in three very important areas,” he said. “These areas include repeat and chronic offenders, high-value offenders and most especially, those who use violence and intimidation to accomplish their goals,” he said. “It is important to stress that this is not a plan to arrest our way out of a problem. As always, officer discretion remains on the table at the time of response to deal with issues, such as poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and mental health.”

McLaughlin added that they have been working with the Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office, which allows for prosecutions seeking punishments other than incarceration, like Services Over Sentences – https://tinyurl.com/a6s56wf7

McLaughlin also recommended that store owners reach out to and develop a relationship with their district BPD Community Service Officers.

“If you don’t have a relationship with your district community service officer, detective commander or sergeant, you should get one, so you have that direction connection to be able to say, ‘We have a problem, we know what it is and we see the reporting, let’s do something about it,’” he said. “Some stores have been very proactive, where they have worked with the store over a period of time to look at what happens at that store, making proactive arrests and seizing what was stolen.”

General Counsel for the Retailers Association of Massachusetts (RAM) Ryan Kearney said billions are being lost due to retail theft in Massachusetts each year, and he said the majority appears to be from organized retail theft.

“The vast majority of losses we’re seeing are through more sophisticated actors versus the low-level shoplifter who’s doing it for – again, it’s low-level, for less of a quantity and once you start getting to high levels and more impact obviously you’re going to have more of an impact on the businesses,” he said. “And those are more typically the ones who get more violent when you confront them.”

Kearney said organized or professional shoplifters are being careful not to go over the $1,200 felony theft limit for Massachusetts, and said RAM has been advocating for more data sharing to aid in catching repeat offenders. Though McLaughlin did say the laws have been toughened up so that repeat offenders see “considerable sentences” for prison time when caught.

Kearney said his organization estimates $1.5 billion to $2 billion in lost merchandise every year from shoplifting, however retail associations in the past have been known to inflate those numbers by reporting all shrinkage – that’s loss of stock due to shoplifting, due to damage, lost items in transit/stocking, retail theft, and theft by employees – and blame retail shoplifting only.

These cases are detailed in the Brennan Center’s reporting – https://tinyurl.com/3v9wahzu – as well as Vox – https://tinyurl.com/mevvcy8w