Giant Food says shoplifting is increasing exponentially and costing the company millions of dollars each year.
Giant Food President Ira Kress says the trend he’s seeing now is unlike anything he’s seen in his almost four decades of work.
“The level of theft and the level of violence associated with the theft have probably increased five to 10 times in the last three years,” he said.
Oftentimes, organized groups target stores taking multiple items at a time, Kress said.
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“It is for profit, plain and simple,” he said. “These are organized retail crime groups or individuals who are stealing product en masse.”
Giant hired more security guards, reduced store hours, shut down secondary entrances and locked down some items.
“We’ve locked down baby formula, we’ve locked down razor blades and we have some stores that have locked down specific types of soap or different deodorants or air fresheners,” Kress said. “Some products are more monetizable than others.”
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At a Giant in Oxon Hill last November, a security guard was shot by an alleged shoplifter, police said. The security guard fired back, and both people died.
“It shouldn’t occur,” Kress said. “No one should go into a grocery store and not leave it alive. No one.”
The National Retail Federation recently said retailers have seen an 80% increase in violence associated with retail crime since the pandemic.
"It's very difficult to ask your employees to step into harm's way, because not only are they endangering themselves, if there is a weapon involved, they're endangering all the consumers who are in that store,” said Mark Mathews of the National Retail Federation.
Kress believes stricter penalties need to be imposed on those committing the crimes.
“Absent those tougher laws, absent the application of those laws, the enforcement of those laws, we continue to see crime escalate and violence escalate,” he said.
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