St. Paul police Sgt. Charles Anderson heard scanner chatter in May about a shoplifting arrest at the Family Dollar store on University Avenue.
Officers had arrested Randy Sterling for misdemeanor theft, but Anderson met them at the scene and suggested that the suspect be charged with felony possession of theft tools because he used a razor to remove an anti-theft device from Tide detergent pods.
Sterling, a chronic offender, pleaded guilty to the theft-tools charge and is serving a 17-month prison sentence.
Sterling's sentence is one that Anderson hopes will become more frequent because of a new St. Paul police unit formed to attack organized retail-crime groups. The unit is believed to be the first in Minnesota.
Anderson classifies Sterling as a booster, or professional shoplifter, who steals merchandise to sell to fencing operations, stores, online forums or repackaging operations that alter the goods for resale to retail chains.
Anderson saw initial success last summer with Operation Pacifier, an informant-led sting that helped connect and accuse six people of receiving stolen baby formula and goods at four "mom and pop"-type shops, or fencing operations. After a presentation to department leadership in late July, Police Chief Thomas Smith approved a one-year effort to tackle elements of these operations.
Popular stolen items are electronics, denim clothes, razors, cleaning products, meat, batteries, diapers and medications.
Anderson's goals are to decrease the number of shoplifting crimes, arrest and jail boosters and shut down some of the 10 to 20 fencing operations in the city.
At a National Retail Federation conference in June in San Diego, Anderson said, law enforcement officials from Southern California and Chicago told him that organized retail rings "target the Twin Cities area with impunity."
The new police unit will work to set up an organized retail-crime association, or ORCA, for area law-enforcement to share information on criminal behaviors, suspects, trends and best practices, Anderson said. About 25 ORCAs operate across the United States with the nearest one in Chicago.
Organized retail crime in the U.S. is estimated to cost stores $30 billion a year in losses, according to the National Retail Federation.
"And the indication from retailers is that it's a bigger problem than that," said Richard Mellor, vice president of loss prevention for the National Retail Federation, adding that 80 percent of retailers surveyed have seen an increase in organized retail crime in the past three years.
One retail partner will be Target, which has helped create other coalitions against organized retail crime in Los Angeles and Chicago.
"We believe that by sharing our significant security resources and ideas with law enforcement, together we build safer communities," said Target spokeswoman Jessica Stevens. "We are thrilled to continue to build upon our strong partnership with the St. Paul Police Department."
The new police unit will handle the estimated 1,200 shoplifting cases that occur in St. Paul each year to better determine who is stealing for personal benefit and who is stealing to benefit an organized retail crime group. The unit will train officers to spot organized retail crime and write better reports to include use of theft tools -- such as in Sterling's case -- and to list the stolen items.
The unit also could free some investigators to focus on other crimes and to connect retail crimes to those involving illegal guns, drugs and gangs.
The St. Paul city attorney's office will be a partner to "have more than one set of eyes, so we can identify boosters," said City Attorney Sara Grewing.
A tool to seek better prosecution of boosters will include a little-used theft statute that lets law enforcement agencies aggregate cases across three other counties in a six-month period to increase charges to gross misdemeanors or felonies, Anderson said.
The low cost of the unit -- mainly the personnel expenses of two officers -- helped it receive approval, Anderson said.
Adam Sack, a Woodbury police officer, has patrolled the retail corridor near Interstate 94 and noticed a lot of retail theft in his two years on the beat. He attended meetings hosted by Anderson and realized "a lot of the same people in Woodbury and Washington County were the same people in St. Paul."
He then established quarterly meetings in Woodbury with law enforcement and retail leaders at the beginning of 2013. The last meeting had more than 40 retail representatives, from CVS store managers to regional managers at Gap and Walmart stores.
"We want to raise awareness," Sack said, "and help stop the crime before it occurs."
Copyright 2013 - Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
